Abortion rights campaigners sue over wording of amendment

Since banning abortion immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, there has been a lot debate around the issue.

And that discussion is continuing to this day, with both sides of the argument having submitted legal challenges over a new move to restore the right to abortions.

In Missouri, a recent poll suggests that more than half the state’s residents – 52 percent – support Amendment 3, which is on the November ballot and basically restores the right to abortions.

This has raised concern among anti-abortionists. But the actual wording of the amendment has raised concerns among abortion-rights campaigners as well.

Mary Catherine Martin, Thomas More Society Senior Counsel, which is campaigning against the amendment, told the AP news agency that overturning the current ban on abortion would remove “critical protections for vulnerable women and children”.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is also under pressure over the wording of the amendment, with some campaigners who say that, if it goes through, the amendment will “will enshrine the right to abortion at any time of a pregnancy in the Missouri Constitution”, right up to the point of birth.

But the same could be said of similar amendments in nine other states across the US, including in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, Nevada and South Dakota.

In the case of Missouri, there appears to be no mention of a time limit up to which an abortion would be allowed. The same is probably true of all the other states, given the relatively hasty nature of drawing up these amendments.

In any case, in most instances, voters have tended to support the right to have abortions, and would most likely support the previous law as it was after the Roe v Wade ruling.

The Roe v Wade ruling, in 1973, was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court in which it ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion.