Despite reproductive rights being enshrined in the Missouri Constitution, abortion remains inaccessible. The state's main abortion provider faces legal challenges to resume services, while anti-abortion lawmakers seek to prevent a return of abortion services through various legislative strategies. A proposed amendment aims to ban most abortions, while existing regulations continue to pose hurdles.
Reproductive rights are now enshrined in the state Constitution, but Missouri ’s main abortion provider is fighting legal hurdles to resume offering the procedure. Meanwhile, antiabortion lawmakers strategize to prevent a return of abortion services.
This week, state lawmakers held a hearing on a conservative-backed plan to put a new amendment on the ballot that would block most abortions. If passed by the General Assembly, the measure could go to voters as soon as this year. would ban abortion except for in medical emergencies, when a fetus has abnormalities, or in cases of rape or incest, with rape or incest cases requiring a police report and subject to a 12-week limit. It would also prohibit public funding for abortions.
The delay in providing abortion access after the election was “a very positive turn of events” that gave conservative legislators time to strategize, state Rep. Brian Seitz, a Republican from Branson, said in an interview. He said it gave his party “time to chip away at certain aspects of Amendment 3.”
In response, a massive campaign gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures to put abortion rights on the ballot. Amendment 3—which established a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including in making decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care and respectful birthing conditions—passed by a 51.6 percent to 48.4 percent margin.
In December, a state court judge in Kansas City temporarily blocked the ban and most of the rules, including the mandatory 72-hour waiting period and bans based on gestational age. The final outcome will be determined at trial, which is scheduled to begin in January 2026. Planned Parenthood’s lawyer argued that it was because of the licensing requirement that abortion access had been confined to one location in St. Louis in the final years of, and that “such extreme restriction on abortion access is not the result contemplated” by those who voted for the amendment. that Planned Parenthood could have requested waivers for the regulations instead of challenging them in court.
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