Billboards, a Catholic Diocese and right-wing politicians have resorted to desperate, last-minute campaigning to undermine support for Amendment 3, say supporters of the Missouri abortion rights initiative on the November 5 ballot.
Missouri has one of the strictest bans of any state, outlawing abortions throughout pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest. Passage of Amendment 3 would legalize abortion up to fetal viability, which is usually around 24 weeks.
This month, ProPublica featured an article noting billboards that have “popped up” in Columbia, St. Charles, Cape Girardeau and other areas in the state, that spread “claims designed to undermine support” for the amendment.
Some of the billboards warn voters to “STOP Child Gender Surgery” even though the amendment doesn’t mention gender-affirming care. Others claim the Amendment will permit abortions in the ninth month of pregnancy, according to ProPublica.
The problem? None of this is true.
The last-minute misinformation campaign doesn’t end with billboards. Last month, St. Louis Public Radio reported on Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s effort to falsely connect the issue to gender-affirming care for young people.
“This is about an effort to come into our schools behind your backs without your knowledge, to tell our kids that there’s something wrong with them and to give them drugs that will sterilize them for life … and there will be nothing we can do about it,” Hawley claimed while referring to Amendment 3.
Hawley’s Senate race opponent, Democrat Lucas Kunce, the ACLU and other supporters of the amendment condemned his remarks as false and an attempt to distract from poll numbers that show strong support for the measure.
Another Republican, State Rep. Brian Seitz, justified attacks on the abortion-rights amendment by claiming it’s really an attempt to protect transgender men playing women’s sports and sex changes for minors.
“I say it’s a multi-subject amendment that should not even be on the ballot. So, might we look at those individual subjects? Of course, we will,” Seitz claimed defiantly.
In 2023, Missouri passed a sweeping ban on gender-affirming care for minors, which largely restricts the procedure. Amendment 3 is totally unrelated to trans health care for minors. Hawley and Seitz’s fear mongering is disinformation.
This attempt to make the abortion rights amendment about something unrelated to abortion has become part of a national trend. As ProPublica stressed, “Republicans are leveraging cultural issues like transgender rights to confuse voters and “build a broader base against the amendment.”
“If you’re going to lose on the substance of that issue, you sort of have to try to make it about something else,” Matthew Harris, an associate professor of political science at Park University, just outside Kansas City, told ProPublica. “Abortion rights, he added, “are broadly popular all across the country, even in red states.”
Unfortunately, it’s not just politicians engaged in the act of misleading or outright false claims about the amendment.
Last month, KCUR-FM, Kansas City’s national public radio affiliate, reported that the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph “sent a letter to every household registered with a Catholic parish in the area urging recipients to vote against legalizing abortion in Missouri.”
In the letter, which was later posted on the diocese website, Bishop James V. Johnston claimed that any health care professional — including a dental hygienist or pharmacist — could legally perform an abortion.” The bishop further stated that the amendment could lead to late-term abortions, “even when a preborn child is old enough to feel pain.”
KCUR also cited the part of Bishop Johnston’s letter that said the amendment would “protect those performing abortion procedures from civil or criminal consequences if their negligence caused harm to the pregnant person or fetus.”
While a religious institution risks losing IRS tax-exempt status it endorses a specific candidate, they can urge congregations to vote for or against a ballot initiative.
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft made claims like Johnston’s when he tried to decertify the petition.
Ashcroft proposed incendiary language for the ballot question that would have asked voters to “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions.”
Attorney General Andrew Bailey pushed a sensationalized estimate – recommended by anti-abortion proponents – of a potential $12.5 billion loss to the state to be added to the ballot summary.
In response, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the organization that got Amendment 3 on the ballot, sued Ashcroft, saying his information was “an inaccurate and biased representation of the amendment.”
Cole County Circuit Court Judge Jon Beetem, agreed with the organization and struck down both Ashcroft and Bailey’s language, ruling that Ashcroft’s misleading summary was particularly “problematic.”
In September, Ashcroft tried to all-together decertify the ballot measure and block it from even appearing on November’s ballot. The Missouri Supreme Court, however, quickly ruled against Ashcroft by a 4-3 margin to keep the amendment on the ballot.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, every ballot measure seeking to expand abortion access, from Michigan to Ohio, has succeeded. A poll released in late August by SLU/YouGov found that out of 900 Missourians polled, 52 percent supported Amendment 3, with 34 percent opposed and 14 percent unsure.
Those numbers have apparently sent pro-life opponents into a collective panic. They’ve run out of legal and constitutional options, so they seem to be advancing desperate efforts to make sure Missouri maintains one of the strictest abortion bans in the county. … Even if it takes misinformation to accomplish that goal.
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.
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