(LifeSiteNews) – Missouri pro-lifers got encouraging news this week about the prospects of overturning constitutional protections for abortion through a new poll from St. Louis University (SLU) and YouGov.
In November 2024, Missouri residents approved a state constitutional amendment establishing a purported “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” that applies to “all matters relating to (so-called) reproductive health care, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, (so-called) abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.” It prohibits the legislature from banning abortion until “fetal viability” and after “viability” if an abortionist claims that killing a woman’s unborn child is deemed “needed to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”
The amendment effectively invalidated the state’s near-total abortion ban, which only allowed abortion when allegedly necessary to avoid the mother’s death or “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
This fall, another amendment will appear on the ballot, which if approved would ban abortion except for rape and incest in the first trimester or for “medical emergencies” throughout pregnancy, along with banning taxpayer funding for abortion or youth gender “transitions.” Republican state Sen. Mike Moon is also proposing a different amendment that would establish personhood at conception and clarify there is no constitutional right to abortion. That proposal does not directly ban abortion but could be interpreted as requiring a stronger prohibition than the other amendment.
KTVI reported that the latest SLU/YouGov poll found 47% of likely voters support the first pro-life amendment compared with 40% opposed and 12% unsure. Most respondents were also opposed to abortion after 15 weeks but supportive of keeping it legal in the first eight weeks as well as so-called “hard-case” exceptions. Majorities also oppose gender “transition” practices for minors.
The findings are far from conclusive but indicate pro-lifers in the state have a strong chance of convincing a majority to back the amendment.
“The ballot language bundles together abortion and gender-affirming care restrictions into a single up-or-down vote,” SLU political science professor and SLU/YouGov poll director Steven Rogers said. “Our data suggest that for many voters, where they stand on gender-affirming care for minors may play a larger role in shaping their position on this amendment than their views on abortion.”
Twelve states currently ban all or most abortions, but the abortion lobby continues to work feverishly to preserve “access” through a variety of means, most prominently deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, enabling the abortion industry to shift much of their business focus from surgical abortions to mailing abortion pills into states where abortion is illegal, to be taken in the privacy of one’s home with no medical oversight.
Pro-abortion state constitutional amendments have been one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tactics to preserve abortion “access” without Roe v. Wade. Up until 2024, it had consistent success since the overturn of Roe using false claims that pro-life laws are dangerous to stoke fear about the issue among the general public.
After 2020, pro-lifers either failed to enact pro-life amendments or stop pro-abortion ones in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont, Kansas, and Ohio, prompting much conversation among pro-lifers about the need to develop new strategies to protect life at the ballot box as well as consternation within the Republican Party over the political ramifications of continuing to take a clear pro-life position.
Ten states had such amendments on the ballot in November 2024. Pro-lifers defeated pro-abortion ballot initiatives in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota, breaking the abortion lobby’s two-year winning streak, but amendments to embed abortion “rights” in state constitutions prevailed in the remaining states.
