Overturning the Will of the People

A red state tradition...

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the national average maternal mortality rate is 22 deaths per 100,000 live births. Missouri’s average maternal mortality rate is about 10 times higher.

In 2020, 85 Missouri mothers died.

Related: We had a lot riding on Amendment 3 in Missouri. It was our attempt to overturn Missouri’s cruel abortion ban. I am a woman and I have daughters and granddaughters. I also believe that every person should have the right to make decisions about their own body. We all deserve bodily autonomy.

I helped with the work and hoped for the best.

On my way to gather signatures to put abortion on the ballot in Linn County.

Missouri was the first state in the nation to completely ban abortion after Roe fell. Our AG at the time, Eric Schmitt, couldn’t get in front of cameras quick enough to sign away the rights and the bodies of Missouri women and girls. The abortion ban had no exceptions for rape or incest — it claimed to have an exemption for “the life of the mother” but you and I know that exemption doesn’t work.

Candi Miller, Amber Thurman, Josseli Barnica, and Nevaeh Crain prove that “life of the mother” exemptions are worthless. These women died because they were denied the care they needed. Some of these women lingered in anguish and pain while left for dead…in a hospital where they could be treated. They were denied abortion care. Legal care that has saved the lives of countless women since 1973.

We had to gather 180K signatures to put abortion on the ballot. We gathered over 380K signatures. It was on the ballot in November and it won. Missouri women and allies fought and won back bodily autonomy.

We won! Can you guess what happened next?

The Missouri GOP immediately vowed to overturn the will of the people as soon as they come back into session in a few weeks. Crazy right? They must not understand how constituent-led ballot initiatives work. You can’t just undo what the people have done…right? Right?

Wrong.

Let me take you for a little walk down memory lane in Missouri politics. If you’ve read my essays for a while, you know that Missouri has had a GOP supermajority for 22 years. Over two decades. You might also remember me saying that Missourians haven’t elected a Democrat to a statewide position since 2018.

However, in that same time period, 2018-2024, we expanded Medicaid and passed an anti-gerrymandering initiative called “Clean Missouri.” We voted down Right to Work. We passed both medicinal and recreational weed. Missourians voted for a higher minimum wage and guaranteed sick leave. We legalized sports betting. We legalized abortion.

And then we elected a Republican Governor and a GOP supermajority into the House and Senate who plan to unravel the initiatives we voted for.

What in the actual hell are we doing? Why are Missourians voting for progressive initiatives and then voting for those who will not honor their vote? What is going on?

A lot. I have a difficult time explaining it myself and I live in the belly of the beast. Rural Missouri. But here is an interaction I have thought about for months that has shed some light on the topic:

I spoke to a woman after an event last summer and she told me something I hadn’t heard before. She was probably in her early 50s. She told me that she was a moderate and an Independent. She said she votes for both parties, but often for a Democrat if they are on her ballot.

She came to hear me speak, so that says she must lean somewhat left.

At the same time, she said she doesn’t much like unions and she thinks school choice can work in instances. She was firm in her respect for the LGBTQ community. She’s religious, but she also thinks women should have bodily autonomy *up to a point.*

I am not sure what that point is and neither was she, but she signed the Amendment 3 initiative and said she was voting for it.

She also planned to vote for Republican Mike Kehoe for Governor.

I asked her why she would trust Kehoe to honor her vote on abortion rights and she said, “The constitutional amendment will force his hand on legalized abortion and I trust him on the economy.”

Gobsmacked.

I was mute for a few seconds. I had never heard anyone express the reason they planned to vote for a progressive agenda and a regressive lawmaker on the same ballot. It made perfect sense to her.

It does not work in practice though…she may not remember that we have been down this path before.

I gathered signatures for bodily autonomy. I talked about Amendment 3 daily online and when I was on the road speaking at events. I reminded folks signing the abortion initiative that voting for any Missouri Republican would be nonsensical. You might as well not sign your name to the amendment because the second any Missouri Republican is elected, they will begin writing a bill to undo your vote.

They told us as much while we were gathering signatures.

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold, is among the anti-abortion activists who sued to keep Amendment 3 off the ballot. She said regardless of what happens in November, there’s a long road ahead.

“This is not the end all be all,” Coleman said. “And I think you will see efforts, win or lose, for Missourians to get another say in this.”

Mary Elizabeth Coleman also said she would do everything in her power to ensure Missourians have “another chance” to vote on abortion.

Another chance to vote on what we just voted on? What does she mean?

She means that Republican lawmakers in Missouri have already pre-filed bills to overturn the will of voters. Just like they did with Clean Missouri. Republicans won in that instance and Clean Missouri, our anti-gerrymandering initiative, was overturned.

That is the same way they plan to overturn the abortion amendment we just passed.

Missouri citizens must gather thousands of signatures to put an initiative on the ballot. Lawmakers do not have to collect even one signature to oppose a constitutional amendment and put it back in front of voters. But, here’s the absolute dirty truth: lawmakers can trick voters by using inflammatory rhetoric or by using “ballot candy.”

On overturning Clean Missouri:

“The politicians and the lobbyists who put (Dirty Missouri) together know that it won’t stand on its own, their policy. And so they’ve got some tricks. Like they’re trying to fool voters into passing this thing,” Nicholson said. “When voters go to vote, the first two bullets they’ll see are intended to make it look like this is a reform package.

The first bullet point on the deceptive ballot to overturn Clean Missouri limited political gifts to $5. Sounds good, right?

The second bullet reduced campaign contributions from $2500 to $2400. Again, this sounds good — it seems on its face to be about campaign reform.

If the voter managed to get down to the third bullet, that’s where they would learn that this was an amendment to allow gerrymandering. It wasn’t about campaign reform. It was about allowing the GOP to undercount some communities and leverage more power in rural districts.

Dirty Missouri won. We voted against the Clean Missouri amendment we had just passed a year before.

Voters were tricked. Duped. Conned. Hoodwinked.

And that is the exact same plan Missouri Republican lawmakers will follow in trying to undo the abortion amendment. It starts in January…they are already foaming at the mouth and pre-filing the bills.

Here we go again.

They won’t stop even when we force their hand. They won’t stop even when we take it to the ballot and win. They will never stop eroding our rights and our vote.

The best thing we can do now is alert everyone we know about what the Republicans have planned for the abortion amendment. Talk to your neighbors and friends and relatives.

Overturning the will of the people? It’s baked in here.

It’s a red state tradition.

~Jess