A trio of anti-abortion advocates in Missouri filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the state auditor in an attempt to thwart a ballot initiative that would amend the constitution to protect abortion rights.
Missouri currently has one of the strictest near-total abortion bans in the country, with no rape or incest exceptions. The state does allow for abortions for extreme medical emergencies threatening the life of the mother.
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A proposed amendment for the 2024 election season would force a vote on enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution, along with adding explicit protections for contraception and in vitro fertilization.
Missouri law requires a financial impact statement of no more than 50 words to be added to a ballot initiative based upon a summary of the auditor’s estimate, which has been the source of controversy for several weeks.
Last month, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in a complicated case that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is strongly opposed to abortion, improperly withheld his approval of the ballot initiative amendment based on the cost estimate of the state’s auditor, Scott Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick estimates that Greene County, home of Springfield, would lose $51,000 in tax revenue, but otherwise, the proposal would be financially neutral.
Monday’s lawsuit, filed by Republican state Rep. Hannah Kelly, Republican state Sen. Elizabeth Coleman, and New Bloomfield anti-abortion advocate Kathy Forck, asserts that overriding the extant abortion ban will hurt the state.
The plaintiffs argue that Fitzpatrick must be mistaken in his assessment that the measure will only affect one of Missouri’s 114 counties. They also argue that abortion protections will jeopardize the state’s access to $12 billion annually in Medicaid funding, according to estimates submitted to Fitzpatrick’s office by anti-abortion groups.
The lawsuit argues that the auditor has a responsibility to inform constituents of “the certain and significant financial losses to Missouri that will attend the destruction of large numbers of future Missouri citizens, workers, creators, taxpayers, and heads of families.”
But the financial consequences are not the plantiffs’ only concern.
“The proposed amendments would allow the destruction of thousands of pre-born Missouri citizens a year, with profound consequences to Missourians that far eclipse financial concerns,” the plaintiffs argue. “As part of the initiative petition process, however, the state auditor is legally tasked with the grim calculation of the financial costs to Missouri from this enormous human loss.”
The American Civil Liberties Union , which has supported several state constitutional amendments to enshrine abortion rights, has been outspoken in its support for the amendment in Missouri.
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“In a climate of extreme hostility, the ACLU of Missouri will continue to fight in the courts, in the statehouse, at the ballot box through ballot measures and other races, and in the streets to restore protections for the bodily integrity and autonomy of all Missourians,” reads a statement from the organization.
The exact language of the amendment has not yet been fully decided, but supporters will need to collect approximately 170,000 signatures to secure the place of the amendment on the ballot in 2024.