Missouri and Arizona officially joined this week the ranks of five states that have fallen prey to extremist-led efforts to enshrine abortion until birth in state constitutions via proposed amendments.
A majority of U.S. adults oppose Democrats’ plans to legalize abortion through birth. Yet voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota who have no doubt been duped by euphemistic calls for “reproductive rights” are poised to decide this November if they will permanently allow abortion through all nine months in their state.
Missouri Republicans, specifically, had a chance to foil the Democrats and abortion activists’ deceptive efforts to sneak unlimited abortion into the deep red state by passing legislation that would have fortified the constitutional amendment process. As Federalist Staff Writer Shawn Fleetwood reported in May, GOP senators even possessed the votes they needed to kill Democrats’ 50-hour filibuster but decided to adjourn the upper chamber instead.
The state GOP’s deliberate refusal to proceed kept them from protecting their state and voters’ pro-life principles from extremists who are set on expanding the abortion industry’s influence after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling.
Abortion in Missouri is currently banned except in cases of medical emergencies. The proposed amendment introduced by the ill-named Missourians for Constitutional Freedom and certified by the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office on Tuesday, however, specifically seeks to permanently permit abortion by adding a “right to reproductive freedom” to the state constitution.
The deliberately vague wording claims anyone in the state will be allowed to “make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to” what it calls “reproductive health care.” The fair ballot language included on the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office website, however, accurately notes that the amendment authorizes “abortion at any time of a pregnancy.”
It also hinders the state from enacting regulations “designed to protect women undergoing abortions and prohibit any civil or criminal recourse against anyone who performs an abortion and hurts or kills the pregnant women.”
“The measure takes away the right from every person who loses a child or a loved one because of negligence during pregnancy, labor or delivery the freedom to sue for malpractice and obtain compensation,” Stephanie Bell, a spokeswoman with Missouri Stands with Women, told the Missouri Independent.
Midwestern Regional Director for SBA Pro-Life America Sue Liebel warned that if the Missouri amendment passes, it would make the state “as radical as California in allowing horrific late-term abortions and forcing the taxpayer to fund them.”
“Missouri’s all-trimester abortion amendment gives the abortion industry a free pass from operating under any health and safety requirements from the state,” she said in a statement. “With Missouri Planned Parenthood business’ record of breaking the law, women and girls will be at risk if the state’s abortion industry goes unregulated.”
In just the last few years, Liebel said Missouri Planned Parenthoods were “caught using moldy abortion equipment, ignoring informed consent laws, disregarding the law for 15 years to report when a woman has a complication, and allegedly being willing to traffick a 13-year-old out of state.”
In Arizona, thanks to recent certification from the secretary of state, voters will decide on a proposed amendment that seeks to add what Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris and outside abortion groups such as ACLU and Planned Parenthood, have painted as a “fundamental right to abortion” to the state constitution.
Arizona law currently bans abortions beyond 15 weeks, something a majority of Americans support. The sweeping language in the proposed amendment hinges abortion availability on “viability,” which it refuses to define and instead leaves up to the subjective judgment of a health care professional. The amendment also prevents the state from passing or enforcing laws punishing abortionists for killing babies.
“Throughout the pregnancy, both before and after fetal viability, the State will not be able to interfere with the good-faith judgment of a treating health care professional that an abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant individual,” the proposed amendment states. “The State will not be able to penalize any person for aiding or assisting a pregnant individual in exercising the right to an abortion.”
This article has been updated since publication.
