Missouri GOP Rolls Out Underhanded Effort to Overturn Abortion Rights Amendment
State Rep. Brian Seitz says his proposal to put a new, anti-abortion amendment on the ballot isn’t an abortion ban… even though it would quite literally ban abortion.
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Around 70% of voters support a right to abortion, and even in an ostensibly deep-red state like Missouri, a majority of voters voted in November to repeal the state’s abortion ban and enshrine bodily autonomy in the state’s constitution through a ballot measure known as Amendment 3. But proving yet again that the anti-abortion movement is inherently at odds with democracy, Republican lawmakers in the state have taken a chilling first step to repeal the measure. Last week, State Rep. Brian Seitz (R) introduced a bill—House Joint Resolution 73—that would put forth a new ballot measure to repeal Amendment 3, either on the November 2026 ballot or earlier, if Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) calls a special election. It’s a direct affront to what Missouri voters made clear they want just five months ago.
The language of Seitz’s bill is ambiguous by design. The ballot measure he’s proposing would repeal Amendment 3, but doesn’t specify when abortion would be banned; if Missouri’s previous total abortion ban would simply take effect again; or whether the amendment would simply open the door for Missouri lawmakers to pass new restrictions on abortion. Seitz refused to specify any of this to the Kansas City Star.
Instead, he wielded the insultingly manipulative language that’s become characteristic of the anti-abortion movement lately. Seitz’s bill offers some limited exceptions (prior to 12 weeks) for medical emergencies like ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages, as well as fetal anomalies, rape, and incest. Consequently, he argued to the Star that this isn’t an “abortion ban” because of its extremely narrow exceptions—all, again, before 12 weeks. This is the playbook that Republicans spent the 2024 campaign trail wielding: refusing to call their policies abortion bans, even though they ban abortion, because they know how unpopular abortion bans are. So, instead, they play up their exceptions that don’t actually work in practice, or they refer to their bans as “reasonable limits” or a “minimum standard.”