Missouri GOP Rolls Out Underhanded Effort to Overturn Abortion Rights Amendment

“We put emphasis on protecting women,” Seitz told the Star. He continued to spout almost indecipherable but wildly insulting nonsense: “It also allows for the rape and incest if the woman decides to do something about that up [until] 12 weeks. And I think that’s what most of the people voted for when they voted for Amendment 3.” 

Seitz’s bill and characterizations of it are “incredibly deceptive,” Maggie Olivia, the policy director for Abortion Action Missouri, told the Star. Jaeda Roth, an abortion rights advocate who volunteered extensively in support of Amendment 3, said lawmakers like Seitz “are going against that choice that their own constituents made. So it’s really just a slap in the face to democracy.”

The proposed ballot measure comes after months of foreshadowing and inner conflict among Missouri Republicans, who made clear from the get-go that they were going to fight Amendment 3—it was only a matter of how, and what they want their new, proposed abortion ban to look like. Even after Amendment 3 passed in November, for months, courts weighed the question of abortion access, and abortion providers’ hands remain tied. By February, clinics were permitted to perform abortions again. But Emily Wales, president of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, told the Star that through all the push-and-pull, Missourians remain confused about what care is actually available to them. 

“They don’t realize that procedural care has been restored in three different cities in the state,” Wales said. “And they definitely don’t understand why an issue that they thought was resolved last fall is already up for debate once again, because the legislature is not willing to listen to the people.”

Disinformation defined Missouri Republicans’ approach to trying to stop Amendment 3. First, throughout 2023, they tried to stop the measure from even getting on the ballot at all, repeatedly pushing the baseless claim that it would cost the state $12 billion. Then, they wrote an absurd summary of the proposed measure that claimed it would allow abortion “up until birth,” and repeatedly delayed when organizers could begin collecting signatures for months. And then, throughout the signature collection period, anti-abortion activists inundated voters with disinformation, in one instance sending mass texts that lied, saying: “Out-of-town strangers are trying to collect your sensitive personal data for extremist groups. … Don’t give them your personal info on a petition. Protect yourself from fraud & theft!” (They were referring to routine signature collection from abortion rights organizers who were gathering signatories’ names and registered addresses as voters.)

Seitz and Missouri Republicans are wielding these same underhanded tactics this time around, too. The Star reports that after a state House committee approved the legislation, the committee declined to make a copy of it available online for the public until the next day. The House also offered little notice about the bill. Dozens of protesters attended the Capitol on Wednesday for the bill’s first hearing, but they were kicked out of the hearing room, the Star reports, in what House Minority Leader Ashley Aune (D) called “unprecedented, unwarranted and, frankly… undemocratic,” adding, “I’ve never seen anything like that in my time here.” Even after being removed from the hearing room, protesters shared testimony and speeches against Seitz’s bill for about two hours.

The protesters’ removal was, in some ways, symbolic of Missouri Republicans’ approach to all of this: As Wales put it, “They’re elected by Missourians to go and represent the people’s interests. And still, they blatantly refuse to implement or follow what the people have asked for.”