Will Missouri vote on abortion rights in 2024? As deadline looms, it’s getting complicated

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With the clock ticking to get a measure enshrining the right to an abortion on a statewide ballot in 2024, Missouri abortion rights supporters appear to be split on strategy and have not unified behind one version of the proposal.

The lack of a campaign, as well as a series of legal battles with anti-abortion Republican officials that kept the abortion rights petitions tied up in court for months, have cast some doubt on the ability for supporters to craft an expensive and time-consuming campaign to get a version of the measure on the 2024 ballot.

“That timeline is going to be really, really tough,” said Emily Wales, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which has not backed a version of the proposals. “Missourians will have access restored. I don’t know that it will be possible for them to vote on this in 2024.”

Failure to get a measure on the ballot would be a huge missed opportunity in a year in which abortion rights are expected to be a key issue. Missouri voters are expected to turn out in droves in 2024, with abortion rights also crucial in races across the board, including governor, U.S. Senate and president.

If a measure does reach the ballot, Missouri, the first state to ban abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, could become the first state to reverse a near-total ban on the procedure through a ballot initiative.

But one new complication for the abortion rights ballot push is the emergence of a Republican-led campaign that would legalize abortion up to 12 weeks and add exceptions for rape and incest.

Jamie Corley, a former Republican congressional staffer who is leading the effort, has pitched her proposal as a middle ground between the state’s near-total abortion ban and the more expansive abortion rights petitions.

Despite this pitch, some abortion rights groups, health care providers and Democratic lawmakers remain skeptical of Corley’s effort, arguing that her proposal would give lawmakers too much room to regulate reproductive health care.

Advocates have also criticized a requirement that women seeking an abortion following a rape report the assault to a hotline.

Mallory Schwarz, the executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, in a phone interview said Corley’s petitions were “misleading,” contending that they were written in a way that would not actually allow health care providers to begin providing abortions again.

“She very clearly didn’t consult with the providers of abortion care in our state or regionally to understand what abortion care looks like in practice,” she said.

Corley, in a phone interview, pushed back on criticism of her petitions, saying that the group seeking the more expansive proposals was looking for an “all or nothing policy where women are left with nothing.”

“We have a dynamic that we have an extreme anti-abortion group and then a pretty extreme pro-abortion group,” Corley said. In a follow up statement, she said it was “really confusing to voters to watch pro-choice groups try to sabotage a bipartisan effort to restore access to abortion in a state that doesn’t even allow rape victims access to care.”

Competing abortion rights proposals

Anna Fitz-James, a retired St. Louis doctor, filed the more expansive abortion rights petitions in March on behalf of the group Missourians for Constitutional Freedom.

After the series of court battles with Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Attorney General Andrew Bailey, both staunch anti-abortion Republicans, supporters have not crafted a formal campaign or rallied behind one version of the measure.

Abortion rights supporters who spoke with The Star largely pointed to the lengthy delay caused by the legal battles between the ACLU of Missouri and anti-abortion Republican officials.

The different petitions range in how far to go in legalizing abortion. One would legalize abortion outright, removing the ban at any stage of gestation. The others would offer state lawmakers some room to regulate, including allowing abortions to be banned after 24 weeks or after so-called fetal viability — the ability of a fetus to survive outside the uterus.

Schwarz, whose organization has not taken an official position on a version of the measure, said it was “committed to the most expansive policy possible.” Wales, with Planned Parenthood, said its preference is “to see a world where we don’t have political, non-medical restrictions placed on care.”

“At the same time, we want Missourians to have access to as much as they can have,” Wales said, saying the group has not come out in favor or against any of the proposals.

Missouri Abortion Fund, which raises money to help Missourians access abortions, in a statement posted on social media last month said it gives “pause to any ballot language that puts an increased burden on patients and providers.”

“The inclusion of viability language, which will set legal standards for decades, is not in line with our values as an abortion fund,” the statement said.

Pamela Merritt, a longtime abortion rights activist originally from Missouri now heads Medical Students for Choice, an international group that trains students about reproductive health care.

Merritt, in a phone interview, said she was part of the coalition pushing for an abortion rights ballot measure in Missouri, but stepped away from the effort in July. While she would support the one measure that would outright restore the right to abortion, she said she had “deep concern it felt like they were considering language…that is essentially restrictive.”

“I don’t think we have a strategy beyond the ballot which gives me pause,” she said. “I’m also concerned about the fact that these ballot measures at their best might protect abortion access to people who are already able to access some abortion care as opposed to centering the people most impacted by the ban.”

Merritt pushed back on the urgency that some supporters feel to get an abortion rights measure on the ballot right now.

“Nobody has convinced me that right now is the only time we have to move this,” she said. “I’m a little concerned that there might be a push to advance a version that has restrictions because people are convinced that we have to do it now and they’re making assumptions about the electorate that haven’t been tested.”

While supporters have been energized by victories for abortion rights in other states such as neighboring Kansas and Republican-controlled Ohio, many acknowledge that Missouri is its own state — a state where anti-abortion activists and officials have for years worked to limit access to the procedure.

“Most abortion supporters would like for this to be a conclusion that government doesn’t get to interfere in a woman’s rights,” said state Rep. Deb Lavender, a Manchester Democrat. “And then we have to have language that passes in Missouri. And I think that’s what’s being weighed right now.”

Lavender said that once supporters decide on a path forward, “it will unleash thousands of women across the state that are ready to go to collect signatures. But we need to get to the start line.”

Schwarz, in a phone interview, pointed to the “onslaught of anti-abortion” attacks from Ashcroft and Bailey, saying that the campaign has looked a lot different than it would have months ago when Fitz-James first filed the petitions.

“For a Missouri effort, it’s important to do it right,” she said. “And be intentional and think about the breadth of the challenges and launch a campaign that can win.”

Schwarz pushed back on the idea that disagreement among supporters was the chief concern for the proposals. Missouri, she said, is fortunate to have a diverse coalition of people pushing to restore abortion access.

“This issue is popular and important to people even in red states,” she said. “As advocates, however, we also have to look at the ways that Missouri differs from other states, ways that our electorate differs from other states and the resources available to us.”

Wales said the values of the groups involved in discussions about the petitions are the same but there are some differences in strategy.

While supporters study how best to move forward with getting resources and building a campaign on one of the more expansive proposals, Corley and her new group Missouri Women and Family Research Fund have pushed forward with a version of their competing ballot measure.

Corley filed a slew of proposals in August, which are tied up in similar legal battles with statewide officials over the wording and cost of the measures. Despite this, however, Corley’s group has started campaigning on a version of the petition that would legalize abortion up to 12 weeks and allow exceptions for rape, incest and “health or safety of the female seeking an abortion.”

Corley, in a phone interview, attacked the state’s near-total abortion ban as extreme. But she also criticized the supporters of the competing ballot measures for being “unwilling to compromise.”

“It’s really time for the other coalition to fish or cut bait,” she said. “We have put forth a passable solution. All they’re doing right now when they are stalling is creating the very confusion they claim to dislike.”

But while Corley paints her proposal as “compassionate” and “rational,” some abortion rights supporters say it’s misleading.

“It’s deceptive — it doesn’t really bring back true access to abortion and to reproductive freedom,” said state Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, pointing to arguments that Corley’s petitions would keep in place laws that had whittled away access to abortion across the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Corley, in a statement, pushed back on this argument, saying that her amendment does not grandfather in targeted restrictions on abortion providers or TRAP laws.

“As we all know, there is not a single ballot initiative that can magically make all of the TRAP laws disappear — not even the ACLU’s,” she said. “Just like in Ohio, our amendment doesn’t change any underlying laws, but it does change the constitutional standard for evaluating both existing and prospective laws. Beyond that, it’s up to the courts, regardless of which amendment passes.”

Missouri Healthcare Professionals for Reproductive Rights, a group of medical professionals led by Jennifer Smith, an OB-GYN in the St. Louis area, penned a letter criticizing provisions in Corley’s petitions in September.

“While we applaud their recognition that our current laws ‘make Missouri [look] draconian, punitive and unsafe for families,’ we find their proposals dangerous substitutes” for the more expansive petitions filed by Fitz-James, the group wrote.

Smith, in an phone interview, pointed to the petition’s language, which would requires rape and sexual assault survivors to report it to a crisis hotline before an abortion can be performed.

“I’m not really sure logistically how that would work out if a patient has to report it and then I have to hunt down her report,” she said. “Why should a patient who’s had this horrible experience have to do more to get necessary health care? As a physician, it’s just ridiculous.”

But Corley, in a statement, said her amendment is “stronger with a reporting requirement and has the added benefit of staving off any attempts by the Missouri Legislature to add a police reporting requirement — which they will do if given the chance to draft these exceptions themselves.”

May deadline approaches

Anti-abortion activists, for their part, have capitalized on the dueling campaigns, attempting to point out the apparent divisions among abortion right supporters in Missouri compared to other states.

“In no other state other than Missouri has there been this intense infighting and public disagreement among pro-abortion groups about which measure to support,” Sam Lee, a longtime anti-abortion lobbyist, said in a lengthy text to The Star.

With the two competing groups, Lee said, “it is looking less and less likely each passing day that either group will get enough signatures by the early May 2024 deadline.”

To get a version of one of the measures on the 2024 ballot, supporters will have to collect more than 170,000 signatures from voters by May. If they receive enough signatures, the measures would appear on the November ballot unless Republican Gov. Mike Parson calls a special election.

If both measures reach the ballot, the messaging surrounding what each proposal would do will be important, Nurrenbern, the Kansas City Democrat, said.

Nurrenbern acknowledged that Missouri may have to take “a bit more of a moderate approach” to make sure an abortion rights measure passes.

“But I think it doesn’t matter who you talk to in the state from conservative Republicans in rural Missouri, they think that women and families should be able to make decisions in their doctors offices without interference from politicians in Jefferson City,” she said.

Despite the tight deadline, Schwarz said she’s never seen this level of support for abortion access.

“That is incredible and heartening and exciting about what is in front of us and what is possible and the power that we have in our state when we come together and take action to demand better — to demand the liberated future of abortion access that Missourians deserve,” she said.