More Missouri women had abortions while the state was under a near-total abortion ban than they did in the years before, when abortion was legal but highly restricted.
That fact has become a fault line among Missouri conservatives debating Amendment 3 — a divide that could matter in an election recentpolling suggests may again be decided by a razor-thin margin.
The legislature-drafted Amendment 3, which would repeal the abortion-rights amendment voters approved in 2024, had support from 43% of likely voters in an August SLU/YouGov poll. Forty-four percent opposed it and 13% were unsure.
But some of the disagreement is coming from an unexpected direction: anti-abortion conservatives who argue Amendment 3 should be defeated because it does not go far enough.
Amendment 3 would ban nearly all abortions, with exceptions in cases of medical emergencies, fetal anomalies and for survivors of rape or incest who end the pregnancy in the first 12 weeks. It would also constitutionally prohibit gender-transition procedures for minors.
The fight exposes a divide inside Missouri’s anti-abortion movement over whether the goal is to pass the strongest abortion restrictions voters are likely to accept or to insist on laws that treat abortion as homicide even if that position risks losing at the ballot box. In an election polling essentially even — and with the anti-abortion campaign facing a huge fundraising deficit— that disagreement could have consequences far beyond an intraparty theological debate.
“It rejects the concept of absolute right and wrong, absolute truth,” Wes Scroggins, executive director of Abolish Abortion Missouri, said of Amendment 3 during a recent appearance on Springfield-area radio station KSGF 104.1-FM. ”It’s basically operating on a utilitarian, really a utilitarian world view that argues that under certain circumstances, under certain situations, it’s OK to do what God forbids if it leads to a greater good.”
Polling illustrates the political challenge facing Scroggins and others who want abortion banned without the exceptions included in Amendment 3.
In a February SLU/YouGov poll, 36% of Missourians surveyed believed abortion should be legal “when the woman wants an abortion for any reason.” In cases of rape, 77% believes abortion should be legally protected.
Election results also suggest a significant number of Missouri voters who supported Republican candidates in 2024 also backed abortion rights. President Donald Trump received more than 1.7 million votes in Missouri in 2024, compared to 1.2 million for then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The abortion rights amendment won with 1.5 million votes.
Scroggins and other members of the small but vocal “abortion abolitionist” movement have challenged those who support Amendment 3 to public debates in the hopes of convincing enough conservative Christians to vote no in November to defeat the measure. Over the past several weeks, those discussions have played out across Missouri radio programs, social media, podcasts and in pews.
Amendment 3 supporters say they understand why some anti-abortion voters object to the exceptions, but argue the measure reflects what is politically achievable in Missouri — and that rejecting it would leave the broader abortion-rights amendment in place.
“I can be 90% on board with a tax issue and just trust that the other 10% takes care of itself,” said James Lawson, manager of the campaign behind Amendment 3, Her Health, Her Future. “When you’re dealing with an issue of right and wrong in life and death, these are tough questions, and they’re questions that we’ve wrestled with as voters for years. And so, we welcome that debate.”
Should women face criminal penalties?
In 2023, living under an abortion ban that only allowed exceptions for medical emergencies, approximately 2,860 Missourians traveled to Kansas for abortions, and 8,710 traveled to Illinois, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group that closely tracks abortion data.
In 2025, when abortion was again legal but not yet broadly accessible as a case over abortion regulations played out in state court, 3,220 Missourians obtained abortion medication through telehealth from out-of-state clinicians — up from roughly 880 two years earlier, according to Guttmacher data.
Those in favor of Amendment 3 contend that while many women may still have the option of traveling out of state or ordering medication online through an out-of-state telehealth provider, making abortion harder to access would be enough of a barrier that some would continue their pregnancies.
Abortion abolitionists often point to the continued number of abortions among Missouri residents during the ban as evidence for why they believe an abortion ban could have little effect on the total number of abortions.
In a recent debate on KRTK 93.3-FM, Republican state Rep. Darin Chappell of Rogersville, who supports Amendment 3, asked state Sen. Mike Moon of Ash Grove, who opposes it, whether there is any way to stop Missouri women from going to out-of-state abortion clinics or ordering abortion medication online if Amendment 3 were to pass.
“Can you imagine the increase in the police state that would have to exist for us to monitor the United States postal service?” Chappell said. “The mailboxes at home? Prescriptions from doctors? Activities at pharmacies? Tracking women to make sure they don’t leave the state?”
Moon said he wasn’t suggesting any of that. Instead, he has argued that abortion laws should impose consequences on women who obtain abortions — a central distinction between abolitionists and many organizations that have traditionally led the anti-abortion movement.
“Some of those same people are saying that I am so pious and I can’t see through these rose colored glasses, that I’m doing the work of Satan and I’m going to have blood on my hands if this thing fails,” Moon said. “There’s going to be blood on either side.”
In spring 2022, after the draft of the Dobbs decision overturning the federal constitutional right to abortion was leaked, but before the Supreme Court released its decision, leading national anti-abortion groups published a letter emphasizing that women should not be criminalized for having abortions.
“As national and state pro-life organizations, representing tens of millions of pro-life men, women, and children across the country, let us be clear:” the letter read. “We state unequivocally that any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women is not pro-life and we stand firmly opposed to such efforts.”
The following year, Moon again introduced personhood legislation intended to extend criminal protections to embryos and fetuses from conception. Under that approach, women who obtain abortions could face criminal prosecution.
Sam Lee, a longtime anti-abortion lobbyist in Missouri, referenced the 2022 letter when he testified against Moon’s legislation.
“What I have argued is that Missouri has never criminalized women for obtaining an abortion since statehood began,” he recently told The Independent. “And I see no reason to do that today.”
Lee considers himself a pragmatist shaped by decades in an anti-abortion movement that had to work within the parameters of Roe v Wade.
“There are those who believe that their moral beliefs should be completely reflected in the law. And I understand that. And wouldn’t that be great if that were true?” Lee said. “ But the reality is that rarely, if ever, is that the case.”
Only a handful of states have put fetal-personhood amendments on the ballot, and all have failed by wide margins. Ultimately, Lee said, such an effort would be a waste of time for the anti-abortion movement.
‘Misleading’ transgender messaging
The fight has grown especially bitter on social media.
The Missouri Freedom Caucus account on X recently called Tom Estes, one of the leaders of the pro-Amendment 3 campaign, a “consistent loser” and a “liar.”
Estes separately posted a graphic of organizations opposed to Amendment 3, placing the abolitionists next to logos for Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and Abortion Action Missouri.
In another exchange, he fired back at the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, a national group, after they blocked his account.
“Their singular obsession is seeing women jailed for having abortions. That is their only real priority,” Estes wrote. “ … Their goal is punishment, not protection.”
Meanwhile, Missouri abortion abolitionists are trying to poke holes in the Amendment 3 campaign’s messaging.
While the main component of the amendment is an abortion ban, the amendment would also enact a constitutional ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
State law already prohibits gender-transition surgery for minors and bars minors from beginning cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers; the latter law has an August 2027 sunset, at which point lawmakers have said they intend to consider a ban without an expiration date.
The Missouri Supreme Court earlier this year upheld the SAFE Act, which restricts minors’ access to cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and gender-transition surgeries and prohibits Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care for all ages.
The first TV ad released by Her Health, Her Future, did not mention abortion at all, but rather focused on “trans extremists.” The main campaign signage reads: “Yes on 3: Ban Transgender Surgeries for Minors.”
Scroggins, with Abolish Abortion Missouri, called the messaging “misleading.”
“We don’t need amendment 3 in order to ban that,” he told The Independent. “And so those advertisements that are claiming that we do, they’re just false, all right?”
Scroggins also rejects arguments that Amendment 3 is needed to preserve parental-consent requirements for minors seeking abortions, pointing to a Missouri judge who late last year threw out a lawsuit that challenged Missouri’s parental consent laws as unconstitutional under the abortion rights amendment.
‘The furious right’
Ryan Hite, who hosted Moon and Chappell on his radio show on KRTK 93.3-FM said he’s increasingly heard from conservatives who are considering opposing Amendment 3 because of its exceptions. He wondered aloud if they’re among the same conservatives who helped hand Republicans in Jefferson City a humiliating defeat of GOP-backed Amendments 4 and 5 in August.
Former state Sen. Bill Eigel, who recently lost his primary bid for St. Charles County executive, recently sorted current Missouri conservatives into three groups: establishment Republicans, movement conservatives and “the furious right.” The latter, he said during an appearance on KRTK 93.3-FM earlier this month, are those fed up with the lack of major movement on Republican policy in Jefferson City who are beginning to distrust those leading the GOP.
Looking at the August results, he warned they might continue voting against Republican priorities on the ballot come November.
And the biggest Republican priority on the November ballot is abortion.
Lawson, campaign manager for Her Health Her Future, said he thinks the fracture among anti-abortion conservatives is overblown.
“We’re expecting a pretty strong coalition when we move into the ballot box on Nov. 3,” he said. “This is not an issue that we feel is much of a distraction for us in the campaign.”
What both Amendment 3 supporters and abortion abolitionists agree on is that the November vote will not end the broader fight over abortion.
“The reality is, this is a race that never ends,” Lawson said.
Moon and Chappell said they both intend to re-file personhood bills next session. Chappell said he believes passing such a measure through the legislature is far more reasonable than passing it on the ballot.
“I don’t think that there’s any way in the world that a majority of Missourians are going to be willing to put a woman who’s had an abortion criminally responsible in that way,” he said.
Moon rejected Chappell’s justification for supporting Amendment 3, accusing his peers of “snubbing” their noses at God.
The Ten Commandments also say not to commit adultery, Chappell countered.
“Can you imagine,” he said, “how empty the halls of Jefferson City would be?”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
