Missourians rejected another abortion ban. Republicans say they’re not giving up yet

Missouri Republicans spent two years trying to reinstate an abortion ban. They emerged from Tuesday’s election with fewer ways to do it — and no plans to stop trying.

About 55% of voters rejected Amendment 3, preserving the constitutional right to abortion approved in 2024. Voters also approved Amendment 6, which sharply limits lawmakers’ power to overturn citizen-approved measures, while Democrats won enough legislative seats to end the GOP’s supermajority in the Missouri House.

The results dealt a significant setback to anti-abortion activists who had hoped Missouri could provide a national model for reversing abortion rights victories at the ballot box.

Missouri voters reject Amendment 3, preserving abortion rights approved in 2024

But state Sen. Nick Schroer, a St. Charles County Republican who will become Senate majority leader in January, said abortion will remain a priority for his caucus, even as lawmakers grapple with the new restrictions imposed by Amendment 6.

Schroer said the issue will be a “hot topic” at upcoming Republican caucus meetings, though lawmakers have yet to settle on a strategy. Several attorneys, including himself, are examining what options remain.

“But are we handcuffed by Amendment Six?” Schroer asked, adding that Republicans will “have to be strategic in what we do.”

Republican lawmakers placed Amendment 3 on the ballot last year, arguing that voters hadn’t understood the reproductive rights amendment they approved in 2024. But Tuesday’s results were more decisive: Roughly 55% rejected the proposed ban, compared with the 51.6% who approved abortion rights two years earlier.

“It’s hard to say this time that they were tricked,” said Matt Harris, a political scientist at Park University. “ … it’s maybe close, but Missourians have demonstrated that they want abortion rights.”

The vote preserves abortion rights before fetal viability. Abortion is available at five Planned Parenthood clinics across Missouri, including in Springfield, where procedural abortions resumed this year for the first time in 21 years.

“Throughout this campaign I’ve been asked a lot about how it feels on the ground,” Mallory Schwarz, executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, said during a victory speech Tuesday evening. “The best answer I could give was people are mad, just plain pissed off that we had to do this again. Mad that our votes, our rights, our values were being undermined by Missouri politicians who thought they could just overturn any vote they didn’t like.” 

Republicans look for another path

Amendment 6 creates a formidable new obstacle for lawmakers hoping to revisit abortion rights through another constitutional amendment.

Under the measure, any legislative attempt to change or undermine a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment must receive support from at least 80% of both legislative chambers before going to voters for approval. That includes the reproductive rights amendment approved in 2024.

With Republicans losing their legislative supermajorities, reaching that threshold would require substantial Democratic support. The new restrictions could face legal challenges, however, leaving some uncertainty about their ultimate reach.

State Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican who helped lead the push to put an abortion ban on the ballot, said Wednesday that abortion will always be on the agenda in Jefferson City. 

Rather than pursuing another constitutional amendment, Seitz said he intends to focus on new abortion regulations.

“Incrementalism is key, especially in this political environment,” he said, pointing at the new makeup of the legislature, which is no longer controlled by a Republican supermajority.

That approach has a long history in Missouri. Over several decades, Republican lawmakers enacted dozens of abortion regulations that steadily eroded access to the procedure, even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

After the 2024 reproductive rights amendment passed, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU of Missouri challenged about 40 of these regulations as unconstitutional. A Jackson County judge struck down most of them, but left in place a requirement that patients see a doctor in-person before being prescribed medication abortion. 

Under federal law, medication abortion can legally be mailed into any state from providers in states where abortion is legal. This telehealth access remains one of the main obstacles to Republicans limiting abortion access in any state. 

Between 2023 and 2025, the number of Missourians getting abortion pills by mail from out of state providers tripled. An estimated 3,220 Missourians obtained medication abortions through telehealth last year.

Seitz said he plans to again introduce legislation aimed at stopping medication abortion from coming into Missouri through the mail. 

Other GOP lawmakers have floated legislation establishing legal personhood for fetuses, potentially setting up another court fight over abortion rights. This includes State Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove who voiced loud opposition to Amendment 3 because he disagreed with the inclusion of any abortion exceptions.

A personhood law could not itself override the state constitution, and any attempt to pass new abortion restrictions would face additional political and legal obstacles after Tuesday’s election.

State Sen. Adam Schnelting, a Republican from St. Charles who carried the failed abortion ban proposal in the Senate in 2025, didn’t share specifics Thursday on what legislation he might put forward.

“I’m never gonna stop fighting for life,” he said. “What form that takes is yet to be seen.”

State Rep. Ed Lewis, a Republican from Moberly who lost his run for state Senate in the August primary, said outside personhood bills, he foresees reluctance to attempt to legislate abortion after what he characterized as a “strong repudiation” Tuesday. 

“I don’t think there’s gonna be anything done in two years,” Lewis said. “I think that it’s just too raw, too much money spent, too much effort. We’re probably gonna have to wait and let things play out a little bit.”

But he does guess there will still be a large focus by Republicans on initiative petition reform, including attempts to limit out-of-state funding to initiative petitions efforts and raise the threshold for passage.

“I think you’re going to see this continued fight over IP,” he said. “And forcing the other side to just spend their money over and over again.” 

The campaign to pass the 2024 abortion rights amendment spent about $30 million. This year, they again raised more than $30 million.

Sam Lee, a longtime anti-abortion lobbyist, said one of his top priorities next year will be asking for more funding for Missouri’s Alternatives to Abortion program, as well as expanding tax credits for pregnancy resource centers, maternity homes, domestic violence shelters and food pantries.

“I know it’s a tough budget year, but if lawmakers are serious about protecting pregnant mothers and their unborn and born children, then we should do that,” he said.

Outside the statehouse, Lee said the initiative petition process is still on the table for anti-abortion activists, and remains the only option for putting another ban before voters if Amendment 6 stands.

“It is what it is,” Lee said. “We’ve dealt with disappointments in the past, and we’ll continue to do so in the future, and we’ll just keep trying.”

State Sen. Tracy McCreery, a Kirkwood Democrat, doesn’t see much of a reasonable path forward for Republicans hoping to further legislate around abortion.

“I feel like the issue is now settled,” she said. 

Instead she hopes to see bipartisan support addressing issues like quality childcare and public school access. As she knocked on doors this fall, she heard from countless families lamenting how unaffordable childcare was, and how long waitlists were. 

She also hopes more lawmakers will support her ongoing efforts to increase accessibility to IVF and a full range of birth control options. 

“One of the best things we can do is help make sure people have access to what they need to avoid unintended pregnancy,” she said.

Did pairing abortion and transgender care backfire?

Supporters of Amendment 3 had hoped that combining an abortion ban with restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors would broaden the measure’s appeal. Tuesday’s results raise questions about whether that strategy worked.

Ahead of the election, David Bereit, executive director of Life Leadership Conference, gathered in Washington, D.C., with anti-abortion advocates from numerous states to talk election strategy. That day, he said, they all galvanized around Missouri.

“We have to win this one because this will set the precedent for the rest of the nation,” he recalled. “
This will send a chilling effect to the abortion industry to say, ‘you are not going to impose this onto us, and if you try to, we will reverse it.’”

The drafters of Amendment 3 tied the proposed abortion ban to a constitutional ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Missouri’s statutory ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones is scheduled to expire in 2027, while the prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries for minors is permanent. 

Bereit emphasized during an October virtual fundraiser that if Amendment 3 passed, other conservative states where voters had approved abortion rights could follow suit, proposing similar amendments linked to restrictions on gender-affirming care.

An August poll by SLU/YouGov Poll showed 44% opposed the abortion ban and 43% supported it. The remaining 13% were unsure.

A February SLU/YouGov survey found a majority of Missourians opposed access to gender-affirming healthcare for minors, with 66% of those surveyed opposing hormone therapy or medications for minors and 72% opposing gender transition surgeries. 

But Ken Warren, a professor emeritus of political science at Saint Louis University and co-director of the poll, said he predicted Amendment 3 would ultimately fail, despite the February and August poll numbers, because polling consistently showed support for abortion rights in Missouri and nationally.

“I thought that as soon as the advertisements came out against Amendment 3, that Amendment 3 would be exposed for what it was,” he said. “It was pretty much a trick by the legislature to try to revisit abortion rights, throwing in an unrelated issue on transgender rights on the ballot to try to confuse voters.”

He said the measure’s defeat was also likely influenced by lower Republican turnout amid a national wave of Democratic victories.

State Rep. Elizabeth Fuchs, a St. Louis Democrat, said she hopes Republicans throw out their playbook to link abortion and transgender healthcare on the ballot.

“Using trans people as a political pawn did not work, and it will not work,” she said. “Missourians saw right through that.” 

TJ Billard, a Northwestern University communications professor who studies media and transgender politics, said it’s easy to interpret these results as a story of who turned out to vote.

“It is very likely that the mobilization in the midterms against the kind of disastrous overall Trump administration meant that more Democratic voters were turning out,” Billard said. “But even beyond more Democratic voters, Independents and Republicans who have found themselves dissatisfied with the current administration.”

Billard also noted that numerous anti-trans ballot initiatives passed in other states while failing in Missouri. But none were linked to an abortion measure. 

“Part of me also wonders,” Billard said. “If — counter to what right wing strategists thought in bundling abortion and gender-affirming care — if instead maybe the abortion component buoyed opposition to this ballot initiative.”

Billard spoke to The Independent a few hours before KFF, a health policy nonprofit, released an election poll analysis that found about six in 10 Missouri voters polled opposed repealing abortion rights and about six in 10 also supported restricting access to gender-affirming care for minors. 

When asked to prioritize their vote, about 45% of respondents said the issues held equal weight for them. But among those who picked an issue, poll respondents were five times more likely to prioritize abortion as an issue over gender-affirming care for minors.

The Independent’s Rudi Keller and Jason Hancock contributed to this story.