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12-09-2024
MISSOURI: Missouri’s top court on Tuesday ruled that a proposed abortion rights amendment to the state constitution will appear on the ballot in November.
The decision will allow voters to decide whether to restore legal abortion in Missouri for the first time in more than two years.
The state enacted a “trigger” law in 2022 that effectively banned abortion, following the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a federal right to the procedure.
The Missouri ruling overturned a lower court’s decision last week to remove the amendment following a lawsuit from anti-abortion groups.
Missouri is among the US states with the strictest abortion laws. Currently in effect is a total abortion ban outside of specific medical emergencies.
It is now one of nine states that will vote on abortion rights at the same time as choosing the next president in November.
The decision came just hours before the deadline to amend the general election ballot.
It is to begin taking “all steps necessary” to ensure that Amendment 3 is on the ballot, the court’s judgement read.
Mary Catherine Martin, a lawyer for the Thomas More Society, the group that filed the lawsuit opposing the measure, told judges on Tuesday that Amendment 3’s wording would “absolutely mislead” voters.
“The average voter reading this would have no way of knowing that it has a limiting effect” on the state legislature’s ability to regulate abortion, Ms Martin said, the Washington Post reported.
The measure, which offers to protect the right to abortion in Missouri until foetal viability, arrived after organisers had gathered more than 250,000 petition signatures. The secretary of state’s office verified them last month.
However, a lawsuit by anti-abortion groups to remove the amendment was accepted on Friday by a Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh, who agreed the measure failed to list what existing laws would be repealed if passed.
Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the group sponsoring the measure, appealed against the ruling over the weekend.
Per state law, the ballot measure would need support from at least 50% of voters to pass. According to a St Louis University/ YouGov poll in August, the measure received support from 52% voters.
Abortion-rights movements are movements that advocate for legal access to induced abortion services, including elective abortion. They seek to represent and support women who wish to terminate their pregnancy without fear of legal or social backlash. These movements are in direct opposition to anti-abortion movements.
The issue of induced abortion remains divisive in public life, with recurring arguments to liberalize or to restrict access to legal abortion services. Some abortion-rights supporters are divided as to the types of abortion services that should be available under different circumstances, including periods in the pregnancy such as late term abortions, in which access may or may not be restricted.
Many of the terms used in the debate are political framing terms used to validate one’s own stance while invalidating the opposition’s. For example, the labels pro-choice and pro-life imply endorsement of widely held values such as liberty and freedom, while suggesting that the opposition must be “anti-choice” or “anti-life”.
These views do not always fall along a binary; in one Public Religion Research Institute poll, they noted that the vagueness of the terms led to seven in ten Americans describing themselves as “pro-choice”, while almost two-thirds described themselves as “pro-life”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
