Abortion Banned Again in Missouri Despite State Voting to Overturn Ban

Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who shamelessly tried to interfere with the passage of Amendment 3, has succeeded in halting abortions—at least for now.

By Susan Rinkunas | May 27, 2025 | 7:40pm

Photo: iStockphoto Abortion Politics

Abortion Banned Again in Missouri Despite State Voting to Overturn Ban

On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court put the state’s near-total abortion ban back into effect by ordering a lower court judge to lift two rulings that had blocked its enforcement. It’s the latest blow in a long saga of trying to restore access in the state following the fall of Roe v. Wade and after voters passed Amendment 3. Abortion providers say they’ve halted care in response, though advocates plan to seek new injunctions to allow abortions to resume.

Missouri banned abortions after the Dobbs decision in 2022, but 52% of the state voted in November to codify the right to abortion until fetal viability in the constitution. Hours after Amendment 3 passed, the two Planned Parenthood affiliates serving Missouri—Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers—sued the state to overturn the ban, as well as multiple additional restrictions. (They did not challenge every restriction, notably one limiting minors’ access to abortions.) Judge Jerri Zhang ruled in December that the ban violated the constitution and, in February, she said that byzantine clinic license requirements were discriminatory—another saga that abortion advocates first started fighting in 2019. Zhang issued preliminary injunctions from enforcing the laws before a January 2026 trial. PPGP and PPGR resumed limited care after those rulings in February, offering procedural abortions up to 13 weeks, but not medication abortion.

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But on Tuesday, the state Supreme Court’s two-page ruling said that Zhang’s preliminary injunctions did not meet the correct legal standard and ordered her to vacate, or lift, those injunctions, which means the laws can once again be enforced…for now. The court told Zhang to re-evaluate the case not on whether the plaintiffs would eventually prevail, but whether allowing abortions to resume would cause harm.

The matter was only at the Supreme Court because of an appeal from Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R), who shamelessly tried to interfere with the passage of Amendment 3. In April, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill that allowed the AG to challenge preliminary injunctions and he appealed Zhang’s rulings days after the bill was signed into law.

Emily Wales, the head of PPGP, told the Associated Press that her organization had to call people today to cancel their appointments.

“This decision puts our state back under a de facto abortion ban and is devastating for Missourians and the providers they trust with their personal health care decisions,” said Wales and PPGR CEO Margot Riphagen in a joint statement. “We will continue to fight for their freedom to the constitutionally protected health care they voted for.”

The ACLU of Missouri said in a statement that today’s order clarified the legal standard necessary to grant a preliminary injunction, and that while the orders blocking the abortion restrictions have been temporarily lifted, they will make new filings. “We will be in communication with the court promptly, highlighting that our arguments met this standard, and we anticipate new orders complying with the peremptory writ and granting the preliminary injunctions blocking the ban and restrictions, once again allowing Missourians access to abortion care,” the organization said.

State lawmakers also recently passed a deceptive constitutional amendment that could go to voters next year. It would ban abortion except in limited circumstances, effectively overturning Amendment 3, but the ballot measure text doesn’t state either fact explicitly.

With ping-ponging expected in the short term, abortion seekers are likely to be confused about whether the procedure is legal in the state. That’s probably the point.