The ballot language that would appear before voters does not explicitly mention that the proposed constitutional amendment would ban abortion
BY: ANNA SPOERRE
Missouri Independent
A proposed constitutional amendment that would again ban abortion in Missouri passed out of a state Senate committee on Wednesday, meaning it is one step away from heading to a statewide ballot.
The legislation approved on a 4-2 party line vote would repeal the reproductive rights amendment known as Amendment 3 but allow exceptions for medical emergencies, fatal fetal anomalies and for survivors of rape and incest in the first 12 weeks of gestation.
If approved in the Senate, the proposal would be on a statewide ballot in November 2026. It could also be placed before voters earlier by Gov. Mike Kehoe.
With time growing short in this year’s session — lawmakers will have two weeks to complete their work after they adjourn Thursday — the Senate Families, Seniors and Health Committee held a public hearing and voted on the bill on the same day.
About 150 people packed the committee room to show support and opposition to the proposal sponsored by state Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican.
For the most ardent abortion opponents, the measure is a test of Republican fidelity to their cause.
“There is confidence, with a supermajority of Republicans at the helm, that those people who are pro-life at home know the representatives and senators in this building are going to do the right thing and bring this back to the vote of the people,” said Susan Klein, executive director of Missouri Right to Life.
Opponents again said the proposal seeks to overturn the will of Missouri voters.
“Stripping away people’s rights to their own god-given conscience in the face of some of the most intimate and tender decisions of their lives is an affront to our humanity and to god,” the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbia said.
House Republicans spent the first three months of the session groping for a proposal that represented a consensus in their ranks. The proposal heard Wednesday passed out of the House earlier this month with only one Republican — House Speaker Jon Patterson of Lee’s Summit — in opposition.
The measure would reinstate the almost total ban on abortions that was in place in Missouri from June 2022 until the passage of Amendment 3.
Patterson at a press conference following the mid-April vote said he had concerns with the limited exceptions allowed in the proposal..
“A debate that we should have — and I hope happens in the Senate — is 12 weeks long enough,” Patterson, a physician, said during the press conference. “ … If you’re going to say it’s OK to (have an abortion) after you’ve been raped, now we’re talking time limits.”
But no changes were made to the proposal on Wednesday.
State Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Democrat from Kansas City, asked Seitz why he picked 12 weeks, noting that sexual violence is among the most under-reported crimes.
Seitz said 12 weeks was chosen because it marks the end of the first trimester.
In 2020, more than 93% of all abortions in the United States were performed prior to 13 weeks gestation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Crime data shows that two out of every three sexual assaults are not reported to police, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine, one group of researchers estimated that since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, more than 65,500 women and girls in the 14 states with abortion bans in place became pregnant after being raped.
Seitz has not made clear if or how survivors would have to prove the crime occurred in order to obtain an abortion.
On Wednesday he said a reporting requirement was not necessary because state law already requires sexual crimes to be reported by physicians, for example. Under Missouri statute, some professions including health care workers are required to report suspicion of rape or incest to police, but only if the victim is under 18 years old. Physicians are not required to report sexual violence against adults.
“It’s also giving an incentive for those who know that a woman or girl has been sexually assaulted to get her to a rape crisis center, to get her to a counselor, to get her to a physician or nurse early enough in pregnancy so that she can make the decision that she needs to make,” longtime anti-abortion advocate and lobbyist Sam Lee said, testifying in support of the legislation.
The ballot language that would appear before voters does not explicitly say the amendment would ban abortions.
Instead, Missourians would be asked if they want to amend the Missouri constitution to:
- “Guarantee access to care for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and miscarriages;
- Ensure women’s safety during abortions;
- Ensure parental consent for minors;
- Allow abortions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, rape, and incest;
- Require physicians to provide medically accurate information; and
- Protect children from gender transition?”
Health care workers weigh in
Much of Wednesday’s opposition testimony Wednesday delved into details of health issues that women face during a difficult pregnancy.
Dr. Christine Jackson, an OBGYN in St. Louis, testified in opposition to the legislation, detailing the experience of one of her patients who learned she was pregnant after she was admitted to the ICU with diabetes complications.
“When I met her, she was grappling not only with her acute illness, but hundreds of questions,” Jackson said.
The issues the woman faced ranged from child care to her son at home to managing her diabetes while pregnant and the potential for serious complications.
Jackson said the patient was too sick to go to an outpatient procedure facility for the abortion, and that she also didn’t meet the criteria for a medical emergency under Missouri’s abortion ban at the time.
The woman ultimately traveled to a Chicago hospital to obtain an abortion.
“She traveled five hours away from her child, away from her partner, away from her home to receive care that we could have safely provided down the hall but was illegal at the time,” Jackson said.
Anti-abortion lawmakers and advocates have for several months argued Amendment 3 eliminated women’s ability to sue providers if something went wrong during an abortion. Attorneys behind the abortion-rights amendment have said this is false.
Asked about this, Jackson said under Amendment 3, providers must still meet professional licensing requirements through the Missouri Board of Healing Arts. She is also still required to carry medical malpractice insurance.
After Amendment 3 passed, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU of Missouri sued the state, challenging several of Missouri’s laws focused on abortion facilities and providers. The proposed ban, if passed, would reinstate several of these targeted regulations on abortion providers, or TRAP laws, that were recently struck down as unconstitutional by a Missouri judge.
Amy DeClue, a surgical nurse from Franklin County, testified in support of the legislation, recounting stories of a few women she cared for in the hospital after they underwent abortions.
“One in particular I’ll never forget because when she showed up, you could tell she was just mentally drained. She was alone, she was afraid, and she was just very sad,” DeClue said. “She couldn’t quit bleeding and they had left products of conception in her.”
‘A culture of life’
Among those testifying against the legislation were women who sought out abortions decades ago in Missouri, when the procedure remained much more accessible, and pastors who said they speak often with congregants about the intersection of faith and health care.
The Rev. Teresa Danieley, a priest in the Episcopal Church, said she disagreed with Seitz’s assertions that Missouri has a culture of life, noting the lack of mandatory paid parental leave, the state’s ongoing child care crisis and the current attempt by lawmakers to overturn the state’s voter-approved paid sick leave law.
Danieley, who wore a button that read “Jesus never shamed a woman,” said she has helped counsel many religious women about their abortions.
“Over and over again I hear these deeply religious women ask, ‘can God forgive me? Am I going to hell?’” she said. “I try to ground them in that they made the best decision they could given that there is no culture of life in this state or in this country.”
The committee adjourned less than two hours into testimony. Of the people crowded into the hearing room and hallway, only six were there to speak in support of the legislation. State Sen. Patty Lewis, a Kansas City Democrat, noted that after her GOP colleagues again said that Missourians only approved Amendment 3 because they didn’t understand what they were voting on.
“Missouri Right to Life represents hundreds of thousands of people across Missouri,” Klein said.
“Where are they?” Lewis asked.