Arizona & Missouri Join States To Vote On Abortion Rights In November

This week, proposed amendments in Arizona and Missouri qualified to appear on the state’s November ballots, allowing voters in both states to decide whether to enshrine abortion protections in their constitutions.

The Arizona and Missouri initiatives are part of a broader wave of similar measures on state ballots, including Florida, Nevada and New York, where a proposed state constitutional amendment to establish a “fundamental right to abortion” qualified for the November ballot on Monday.

Similar constitutional amendments have passed in other Republican-dominated states, including Kansas and Ohio.

In Missouri, the measure allows voters to consider a constitutional amendment that would “establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion contraceptives,” while also removing the state’s abortion ban, which currently has no exceptions for rape and incest.

According to a Tuesday news release from Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the ballot initiative would still permit abortion restrictions after fetal viability.

Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, which gathered signatures for the initiative, called it “a major step forward for our campaign and for Missourians.”

In Arizona, the Arizona Abortion Access Act received 577,971 certified signatures, nearly 200,000 more than the required amount to appear on the November ballot, as announced by the secretary of state’s office on Monday.

“Today, we got word that Arizona’s 15 counties finished their review of a random sample of our signatures and the Secretary of State confirmed that we gathered far more than enough valid signatures, 50 percent above the required minimum. It is the most signatures ever validated by a citizen’s initiative in state history,” announced the Arizona for Abortion Access group, which had sponsored the measure, in a statement.

“This is a huge win for Arizona voters who will now get to vote ‘yes’ on restoring and protecting the right to access abortion care, free from political interference, once and for all,” said Arizona for Abortion Access campaign manager Cheryl Bruce.

Similar to Missouri’s initiative, Arizona’s measure would enshrine the right to abortion in the state’s constitution up to fetal viability, typically considered to be between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy.

In May, the Arizona Senate voted to repeal the state’s 160-year-old near-total abortion ban, which had been revived by the state’s Supreme Court.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs signed the legislation the next day, stating, “We should recommit to protecting women’s bodily autonomy, their ability to make their own healthcare decisions and the ability to control their lives.”