Maggie Olivia, a senior policy manager with Abortion Action Missouri, embraces abortion-rights supporters after the race is called in favor of Amendment 3 on Tuesday in St. Louis (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).
ST. LOUIS — Abortions rights will be enshrined in the Missouri Constitution, after voters on Tuesday overturned the state’s near-total ban.
The Associated Press called the race at 10:30 p.m. with Amendment 3 winning 54% to 46%.
“We did not accept this nightmare thrust upon us,” said Tori Schafer, deputy director for policy and campaigns of the ACLU of Missouri.
When the amendment goes into effect in 30 days, abortion will be legal up until the point of fetal viability — generally seen as the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb on its own, or around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The amendment also protects access to other reproductive health care, like birth control.
Missouri has a long history of electing anti-abortion lawmakers who over the last several years crafted some of the more restrictive laws in the country, known as TRAP laws, or “targeted regulation of abortion providers.”
The legislature in 2019 passed a “trigger law,” meant to go into effect if Roe v. Wade fell. When the constitutional right to an abortion was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022, Missouri was the first state to make virtually all abortions illegal.
A decade ago, more than 5,000 abortions were performed in Missouri, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. By 2020, that number dropped to 167 due to a series of “targeted regulation of abortion providers” laws enacted by the legislature, including a mandatory 72-hour waiting period between the initial appointment and a surgical abortion and mandatory pelvic exams for medication abortions.
Between June 24, 2022 and July 31, 2024, 74 abortions were performed in Missouri under the state’s emergency exemption, according to health department data.
In January, a coalition called Missourians for Constitutional Freedom formally kicked off a citizen-led initiative petition process to get abortion on the ballot.
The coalition, whose leaders include the ACLU of Missouri, Abortion Action Missouri and the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates, emphasized the state’s strict abortion laws in the months leading up to the election.
The abortion-rights campaign saw overwhelming support across the state early on, turning in more than 380,000 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office in May.
The campaign behind the amendment successfully raised more than $16 million leading up to the November election, according to reports filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission. This money, a significant portion of which came from out-of-state groups that don’t disclose their donors, helped fund TV ads and other messaging across the state.
Those opposed to the amendment launched a mostly grassroots effort to fight the amendment with the help of anti-abortion lawmakers, churches and activists. Their messaging leaned heavily into claims that the amendment would legalize gender-affirming surgeries for minors, something legal experts have disputed.
Several different PACs created to encourage Missourians to “vote no” cumulatively raised a few million dollars to fight the amendment, including through radio ad buys, billboards and fliers, mostly relying on word-of-mouth to raise concerns with the amendment.
Susan Prinster, 72, a member of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in O’Fallon, gathered with a few dozen other parishioners to pray the rosary on Tuesday afternoon, hours before polls closed across the state.
“I’m very scared,” Prinster said following the recitation of the rosary late Tuesday afternoon in St. Charles County as part of a larger effort across the Archdiocese of St. Louis to pray for the defeat of Amendment 3. “I don’t know where this thing came from.”
Prinster remembers the moment 52 years ago when she learned Roe v. Wade, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that protected the constitutional right to an abortion, was decided. She was holding her first child, still an infant, in her arms at her home in Missouri.
“It was awful,” she said, recalling how she looked down at her child as they swayed in a rocking chair.
Sylvia Kiphart, a retired preschool teacher who now serves as coordinator for Assumption’s “Pro-Life” program, said if Amendment 3 passes she hopes a new ballot measure is quickly introduced attempting to overturn it.
“We’ve got to stop them,” she said. “We’ve got to. We can’t keep killing babies.”
While the amendment will go into effect in early December, abortion won’t immediately become readily accessible across the state.
Leaders with Missourians for Constitutional Freedom have said many of the state’s existing TRAP laws, which made access nearly impossible prior to the abortion ban, will first need to be challenged in court.