Opponents of Missouri’s abortion rights amendment turn to anti-trans messaging and misinformation

This article was originally published at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

The billboards have appeared along Interstates 55 and 170 around St. Louis. They are located along I-70 between Columbia and St. Charles, in central Missouri. And there’s one in front of a shopping center in Cape Girardeau, along the Mississippi River in the southeast corner of the state.

In fact, as the Nov. 5 election approaches, motorists can see billboards all over Missouri.

Each is airing claims designed to undermine support for an abortion rights amendment that was put on next month’s ballot through the state’s initiative petition process. Some billboards warn voters to “Stop Child Gender Surgery,” even though the amendment does not mention gender-affirming care. Other posters say it would allow abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy, although a state appeals court ruling in a case challenging the wording of the amendment’s ballot summary said it would not true

Missouri’s abortion law, which bans nearly all abortions except in medical emergencies, with no exceptions for rape or incest, took effect in June 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned lar Roe v. Amendment 3 would enshrine reproductive freedom in the state constitution, overturning any laws restricting abortion before fetal viability, usually around the 24th week of pregnancy. The amendment would also safeguard other reproductive rights, such as access to in vitro fertilization and birth control. Polls show the measure is likely to pass: a recent poll showed 52 percent in favor and 34 percent against.

But abortion opponents, buoyed by poll numbers showing their case is losing ground even with the state’s largely conservative voters, are taking steps to undermine support for the amendment.

“Abortion rights are widely popular across the country, even in red states,” said Matthew Harris, an associate professor of political science at Park University outside Kansas City. “If you’re going to miss the bottom of this issue, you need to try to do it about something else.”

Opponents have invested about $1 million in a last-minute misinformation campaign that has paid for radio ads and at least some of the billboards. The goal seems to be to sink the effort, or at least try to redefine what it means to endure it. Among the top contributors is John Sauer, Missouri’s attorney general from 2017 to 2023 who served as a lawyer for former President Donald Trump.

Sauer, who has a long history of anti-abortion activism and represented Trump before the US Supreme Court in his immunity case, has invested $100,000 in a new political action committee – Vote ‘No’ the 3- which is financing many of the billboards. according to campaign finance reports. Sauer did not respond to voice and text messages on his cell phone. PAC Treasurer Jim Cole, a longtime Missouri Right to Life official, declined to comment.

Opponents are trying to capitalize on polls showing Missourians oppose gender-affirming health care for minors, which is already illegal for transgender children in the state, and allowing athletes to compete outside of their birth gender. By compounding the issues, political observers say, opponents hope to confuse voters and build a broader base against the amendment.

The anti-transgender messaging in Missouri is part of a national trend, where Republicans are using cultural issues like transgender rights to rally conservative voters in the 2024 campaigns.

Opponents are also strategizing about next steps if they lose at the polls. They are ready to shift their efforts to a more receptive audience: a state legislature dominated by deeply conservative politicians who have often acted against public opinion.

The Missouri General Assembly has a history of using “ballot candy,” where lawmakers add politically charged language they support to amendments to undo voter-approved measures they don’t like. Some lawmakers have vowed to continue fighting the abortion rights amendment if it passes.

In 2018, for example, voters overwhelmingly approved the Clean Missouri initiative, which aimed to reform some of the worst abuses of legislative redistricting. Two years later, Republican lawmakers introduced new ballot language that reframed the issue, focusing on minor ethics reforms while quietly seeking to reverse many of the changes in the Clean Missouri initiative. This repeal effort narrowly missed out.

A similar tactic is evident in Missouri’s Amendment 7, which the legislature placed on this year’s ballot. While it is disguised as a measure to ensure that only US citizens can vote, something already required by law, its real impact would be to ban ranked-choice voting in the state, a measure strongly supported by Republicans in the General Assembly.

Benjamin Singer, the former communications director for the Clean Missouri Campaign, called the Legislature’s action to undo Clean Missouri “brazen” and said the Amendment 7 effort is part of a pattern. Singer, now executive director of Show Me Integrity, a group focused on promoting Democratic reforms in Missouri, said voters shouldn’t underestimate how far lawmakers will go to reverse popular measures.

“Think of the dirtiest trick in Missouri political history,” Singer said, “and plan for the worst.”

State Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican, said abortion rights advocates were the ones who played a trick by trying to protect transgender men who play women’s sports and minor sex reassignments. “What is Amendment 3 really about? I say it’s a multi-issue amendment that shouldn’t even be on the ballot. So could we look at those individual issues? Of course we will.”

Seitz said that if conservative lawmakers did not adequately represent the will of the people, “Why are we continually elected?”

But while Missouri voters typically elect conservative leaders to a legislative majority, many of the issues resonating with voters tell a different story. Voters have rejected legislation that would have allowed employees to opt out of union dues, legalize recreational marijuana and expand Medicaid, policies at odds with the priorities these lawmakers have championed.

These leaders this year sought to limit citizens’ ability to submit amendments to directly change the constitution. Republicans wanted to include candy in the measure, which would have added issues unrelated to immigrant voting and foreign fundraising. But that measure was defeated after an overnight Democratic filibuster.

“Missouri voters don’t like the idea of ​​government interference in general, but at the same time they support conservative principles,” said Beth Vonnahme, associate dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “So when you have a candidate who stands up for conservative principles, they win. But when you have amendments that are progressive but focus on government interference, they tend to do pretty well, too.”

Before the abortion amendment made it to the ballot, it survived a series of legal challenges. In September, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to keep Amendment 3 on the ballot, rejecting claims that the initiative did not list all the laws it could affect.

Still, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, R-Jefferson County and architect of Missouri’s abortion ban, and one of the plaintiffs in the state Supreme Court case, said advocates of the amendment lie “saying it won’t do some things”. which it very clearly will.” He said that if Amendment 3 passes, the only way for lawmakers to undo the damage would be to put a new amendment on the ballot to override it.

Marcia McCormick, a Saint Louis University law professor who specializes in sexuality and the law, called the billboard “straw man” arguments very misleading. He emphasized that while Amendment 3 guarantees reproductive freedom, it focuses narrowly on fertility and childbirth.

Michael Wolff, a retired chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, said he was confident that anti-abortion lobbyists are already working with lawmakers on a new amendment. Wolff, who helped advise Amendment 3 advocates on the ballot language, said he anticipated the effort would lead to the issue of transgender health care, as the billboards have.

He said lawmakers could spearhead a new amendment “the same way they started with Clean Missouri — they started with something that people would agree with,” adding, “Everybody with any resource who puts together proposals polls will survey which one the voters will find attractive.”