JEFFERSON CITY — The Missouri Supreme Court late Monday handed a loss to Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft in a fight over the ballot summary of a possible abortion rights initiative petition in 2024.
After the Cole County Circuit Court and the Missouri Court of Appeals at Kansas City scrapped ballot summaries Ashcroft proposed for six abortion initiative petitions, the elections chief appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court to take the case.
But the Missouri Supreme Court late Monday rejected transfer of the case in question, keeping the lower court ruling intact.
The high court also declined to take up a separate case by two Republican lawmakers and a third plaintiff challenging fiscal estimates by Republican Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, again allowing the appeals court decision to stand.
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Ashcroft’s ballot summary asked if voters wanted to “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth, without requiring a medical license or potentially being subject to medical malpractice.â€
In a ruling written by Judge Thomas Chapman, a three-judge panel of the appeals court agreed Ashcroft crossed a line.
“The Secretary’s summary statements are replete with politically partisan language,†Chapman wrote.
Most of the six proposed initiative petitions at issue would allow the state to restrict abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy or fetal viability. One of the versions contains no gestational limits on abortion.
A ballot summary for one of the questions containing limits, approved by the appeals court, asks Missouri voters if they want to amend the constitution to:
- establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, with any governmental interference of that right presumed invalid;
- remove Missouri’s ban on abortion;
- allow regulation of reproductive health care to improve or maintain the health of the patient;
- require the government not to discriminate, in government programs, funding, and other activities, against persons providing or obtaining reproductive health care; and
- allow abortion to be restricted or banned after Fetal Viability except to protect the life or health of the woman?
Wording for the same question proposed by Ashcroft asked if voters wanted to amend the constitution to:
- allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth, without requiring a medical license or potentially being subject to medical malpractice;
- nullify longstanding Missouri law protecting the right to life, including but not limited to partial-birth abortion;
- allow for laws to be enacted regulating abortion procedures after Fetal Viability, while guaranteeing the right of any woman, including a minor, to end the life of their unborn child at any time; and
- require the government not to discriminate against persons providing or obtaining an abortion, potentially including tax-payer funding?
It was unclear whether a coalition of abortion-rights supporters would emerge to support one of the ballot questions originally filed in March by the group Missourians for Constitutional Freedom.Â
Since then, a former GOP congressional staffer has launched a separate effort that would be less expansive than the measures at issue Monday.