Happy Friday! Is anyone else falling asleep this morning after staying up too late watching the State of the Union? It's a rough day for those of us who like to be in bed by 9. Let's get to it: Ballot initiatives have become a chief strategy to restore reproductive rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. So Missouri’s Republican-led legislature is taking a page from the Ohio GOP’s playbook and trying to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution — several months before a possible abortion rights ballot initiative is up for a vote. It’s a tactic that has become increasingly popular in conservative states. Last month, the Missouri Senate passed a joint resolution that would require future constitutional amendments — including initiative petitions — to win not just a statewide majority but also majorities in at least five of the state’s eight congressional districts. That change is expected to pass in the House in the coming weeks and would add another hurdle to ensuring abortion rights by ballot initiative. But there’s an opening for abortion rights advocates to defeat the new rules because the resolution would also need to be approved by a statewide majority of Missouri voters. Some Republicans are hoping for that vote to happen in August, a low-turnout month for elections that would also put the higher threshold in place by the general election in November, when voters might decide on the abortion rights initiative. Jamie Corley, a Republican abortion rights activist who runs the Missouri Women and Family Research Fund, said that making ballot measures harder to pass is unlikely to be popular with voters. “I don’t know who is telling them that this is going to poll well,” says Corley. “People love the initiative petition process in Missouri — we use it all the time. People like the right to direct democracy.” But the move came as no surprise to many abortion rights groups. That’s because it’s been tried before. Last summer, Ohio’s state legislature voted to require a 60 percent threshold instead of the former 50-plus-one needed to change the state’s constitution. Ohioans voted down that measure, called Issue 1, in an August special election which drew national attention. In November, Ohioans followed up by voting to enshrine abortion rights into their constitution. Republican lawmakers in South Dakota and Arkansas tried similar tactics, both to no avail. Abortion rights activists who were involved in Ohio’s ballot initiative say there’s an upside: Reproductive rights supporters in Missouri have a playbook which can help them follow Ohio’s path to enshrining abortion. “We’ve luckily had some foresight into what these campaigns [to raise the bar to amend the constitution] shake out to be,” says the Ohio ACLU’s Deputy Policy Director Collin Marozzi. If the Missouri legislature — as expected — votes to make it more difficult to change the constitution, reproductive rights advocates in the state will be running two campaigns at the same time: one to strike down the state legislature's resolution, and one to collect enough signatures to get the abortion rights initiative on the ballot in November. Tori Schafer, a spokesperson for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the group behind the initiative, told Women Rule that they are on track to receive enough signatures to appear on the ballot, but couldn’t provide a specific number. The initiative will need about 172,000 to qualify. Marozzi tells Women Rule that Missouri activists who want to defeat the new rules should hammer home the message that “these attempts to make it harder for citizens to pass ballot measures is really an attempt by politicians and legislators to take away the power of the people to govern themselves through the majority rule.” Lauren Blauvelt, executive director at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, agreed that ballot initiatives are popular: “What we saw in Ohio, and what we’ll see in Missouri, is that voters don't want their right and access to the ballot to be taken away.” Marozzi also advised Missouri activists to make sure that the implications for the abortion rights ballot initiative is clear by the possible August special election — which won’t have the word “abortion” anywhere on the ballot. “Those messages really resonated with Ohioans, and I think they're gonna resonate with the people of Missouri as well,” he says. Republicans in the state legislature push back on the idea that the resolution adding restrictions on amending the constitution is a response to the abortion rights initiative. “I understand their knee-jerk reaction to make everything about abortion for political purposes,” says Republican state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, who introduced the resolution. “But the truth is that Missouri's founding documents are continually meddled with because our threshold is so low to make constitutional changes.” Republican state Rep. Bishop Davidson said that making it more difficult to change Missouri’s constitution has been a longstanding goal in the state GOP (though it has failed to gain real traction until now). But Davidson wouldn't say timing was entirely unrelated to the abortion rights initiative: “I don't think you can say that one is happening because of the other because initiative petition reform has been a priority for so long,” he tells Women Rule. “But yes, [the abortion rights initiative petition] seems to have raised awareness of the issue amongst your regular Missouri voter and maybe even the legislature as well.”
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