On election day last November, supporters of reproductive rights in Missouri were quietly full of hope. For more than two years, abortion has been almost illegal in the state, due to a trigger law which entered into force a few minutes after the Supreme Court made its decision Dobbs v. Jackson, overthrowing Roe c. Wade. It is only in the case of a medical emergency that a woman could obtain an abortion of a viable fetus, and anyone who caused an abortion in other circumstances would be guilty of a crime. But for months, opponents of the law campaigned to adopt amendment 3, which would devote the law to the constitution of the State “to make decisions concerning genesic health care” without interference from the government. They were inspired by the neighboring Kansas, which, despite its GOP penchants, had voted by eighteen points to preserve the rights to abortion, and from half a dozen other states, including Kentucky and Ohio, which had followed suit.
Again, the Missouri was one of the most conservative states to put the rights to abortion to an electoral test from Dobbs. The last time that a candidate for the Democratic presidential election had won the Missouri was in 1996 and, this time, Donald Trump was certain to defeat Kamala Harris and lead a republican offices of office on the level of the state. Josh Hawley, the US Senior State of the State, insisted, against all the evidence, that amendment 3 did not concern abortion but, rather, to provide care for minors affirmed by the sexes. He falsely called it “an effort to get into our schools, behind your back, without your knowledge, to tell our children that there is something that does not go with them and to give them drugs that will sterilize them for life”.
Deborah Haller, a retired nurse, who spent nine years to lead the Department of Public Health in the rural county of Johnson, about an hour east of Kansas City, knew that thousands of women crossed the border of Illinois and Kansas to end their pregnancies, and that many others obtained abortion pills by telemedicine. The Missouri restrictions were “inadmissible”, said Haller. The evening of the elections, she was delighted when 51.6% of the state voters said yes to amendment 3, but she quickly said to her husband: “I wonder how long it will be before overthrowing it.” Connecting their conversation to me, she said, “It didn’t take long.”
Less than twenty-four hours after the closing of the polls, the two Missouri Planned Planned clinics brought legal action, asking a court to honor the result and raise medically useless abortions of abortions which were on state books, including a period of waiting for sixty-two hours, a ban on substitution of drug drugs. The limits, in fact, since 2018, had left the Missouri with a single abortion clinic in the years preceding Dobbs. Indeed, lawyers for the government of the Republicans have opposed, claiming that the regulations must be applied to protect patients.
It was not until February that a Kansas City judge temporarily struck most of the state regulations targeting abortion suppliers, even if it allowed several others to remain, as the condition that clinics meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers. Three Planned Parenthood clinics began to administer abortion care, but the government has appealed, and the Supreme State Court interrupted the abortions in May. The case went back and forth, the judge said again in July that surgical abortions can take place, for the moment, and the state, once again, appealing. The Secretary of State of the Missouri Office has published a rule that effectively prevents clinics from providing abortions by drugs, which represent almost two thirds of abortions nationwide. By increasing the pressure, the attorney general of the state, Andrew Bailey, continued Planned Parenthood on July 23, calling the organization a “death factory”. (He has since been appointed co-deputy director of the FBI) The most disturbing supporters of the rights of abortion: the Republicans of the Missouri Legislative Assembly have decided to place a new constitutional amendment on the next year voting bulletin which would seriously restrict the abortion. By adopting the measure, the Republican legislators said that voters should not understand what was in Amendment 3, or if it would surely have been defeated.
The Missouri is not the only state where anti-abortion activists have at the end of post-dobbs gains on abortion rights. In Ohio, despite a referendum in 2023 which prohibited the State from “backing down, prohibiting, penalizing and interfeiting with access to abortion” before viability, the challenges of abortion rights are spawning a path before the courts. Even states with significant abortion prohibitions attend intensive attempts to make reproductive care more difficult to obtain. Texas and Louisiana, for example, target a doctor from New York for having allegedly raped the laws of states when she prescribed abortion pills to patients in their states. Louisiana adopted a law last year which classifies mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled substances, potentially delaying the treatment of life for pregnant women and making them more difficult to manage false layers. (The law is challenged before the courts; legislators in states such as Missouri have introduced similar legislation.) Candace Gibson, director of state policy in the pro-Choice Guttmacher Institute, called on the prospect of such “terrifying” legislation. She added: “Unfortunately, what type of care you can access really depends on where you live.”
When I went to see Selina Sandoval, an Ob-Gyn at the Kansas City Planned Planned, the clinic offered abortions for the second time since the decision in July. Sandoval explained that, in the middle of the changing landscape, it is quickly updated by the lawyer for the organization when new information arrives. “Even as a person who does this care every day, it is so difficult to follow what is going on,” she told me between appointments. (She also sees patients through the state line in Kansas.)
Access apart in addition, abortions at Missouri has made it difficult for Planned Parenthood clinics to prepare for the periods when abortion has been authorized. They cannot always train and assign the staff in an instant, or easily plan doctors or pass the word that they are open for business. Uncertainty is “really disruptive for care, which is obviously the goal,” said Sandoval. Emily Wales, president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, who includes the central and Western Missouri, noted that for years, clinics told patients that their care could be interrupted. “We have had available appointments,” she said, “but we will say to people by reserving them:” We have an upcoming license renewal “or” we have an injunction in place that has an audience, so let’s go and create a backup plan “. “”
Out of ten appointments available the day I visited, only seven were filled in advance. I spoke with a patient, a twenty-eight-year-old medical assistant and mother of four young children. She assumed that she had to travel for a treatment, like a friend, and had been surprised to discover that she could make an appointment in Kansas City. If she had to travel for an abortion, “it would have caused chaos in my life,” she told me. “It would have been difficult to have to take off from work, then, in addition, it’s already overwhelming.”
Angela Huntington spends her working days, and many of her out of her outlets, creating what she calls a “gentle landing” for patients abortions in Missouri and beyond. Based in Columbia, two hours east of Kansas City, Huntington is part of a network of patients who buy plane tickets, send carpooling gift cards, reimburse hotel and childcare costs and organize payments for abortions that patients could not otherwise afford. In 2024, one hundred and fifty-five thousand people crossed state lines for abortions. “There is so much meaning in what I do.” Huntington told me. “I don’t know if I could do something else.” The day we met, she worked with a woman without housing who lived in thirty-five miles from the nearest airport. The woman had never stolen, and she was arrested by the safety of the airport because she did not have a real identity or home address room which corresponded to her proof of identification. “It’s a mess,” said Huntington.
A woman’s efforts to obtain an abortion lasted five states. Nurse and mother of five daughters in a small town in southern Missouri, she was delighted when she discovered, earlier this year, that she was pregnant with a boy. The tests, however, quickly revealed a trisomy 18, a genetic anomaly which is generally fatal, often before birth. Few infants born with the condition live more than a year, and their short life is marred by breathing difficulties and difficulties and other forms of distress. The woman learned that her unborn son – whatever and her husband had appointed Mychael – had a particularly serious case. “We went to all meetings. We have done all the ultrasounds, ”she told me. “Beyond a miracle, there was no way to deliver a child in good pain without pain.”
