Red states pass pro-abortion constitutional amendments

Ten states held referendums on abortion Tuesday, and the pro-life campaigns lost in all but three, even as President-elect Donald Trump won the race for the White House. Americans woke up to mixed reactions from leading pro-life organizations the morning after Election Day.

Some groups celebrated the defeat of the pro-abortion Harris-Walz ticket as a victory for life. “In the first presidential election since Dobbs, Americans have rejected the Democrats’ no-limits abortion agenda,” said Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser in a news release Wednesday morning. “Democrats led by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz went ‘all in’ on abortion as their No. 1 issue. … Millions of Americans heard President Trump and others challenge Harris and Walz to name their limits, even for painful late-term abortions of healthy babies, and get no answers.”

But voters in several states that Trump won or is leading in also approved amendments adding a right to abortion to their state constitutions, effectively legalizing abortion throughout pregnancy. Some leading campaigns against the amendments blame these devastating losses for the pro-life movement on powerful misinformation campaigns from supporters.

Perhaps the most severe loss came in Missouri, where voters approved an amendment prohibiting the government from denying or infringing “upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” which it defines as including prenatal care, childbirth, abortion, and other pregnancy-related matters. The amendment prohibits the government from interfering with that right before viability, usually around 24 weeks of pregnancy, but requires broad mental health exceptions afterward that pro-lifers say amount to legal abortion for any reason.

With 99% of votes counted in Missouri, the measure had 51.7% support. Trump, meanwhile, won more than 58% of the state’s popular vote. Missouri Stands with Women, the pro-life coalition opposing the amendment, noted in a statement that the majority of counties voted down the measure.

Missouri was the first state to put its law protecting unborn babies from abortion into effect following the overturn of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. With yesterday’s results, the state is also the first state with currently enforced protections for unborn babies from abortion throughout pregnancy to pass a constitutional right to abortion overturning those protections. Ohio voters in 2023 passed a similar amendment, leading to the demise of a state law protecting unborn babies with detectable heartbeats. That law was not in effect at the time of the 2023 election.

This year, constitutional amendments establishing a “right to abortion” also passed in Montana, Arizona, and Nevada, three states where Trump won or is currently leading. Montanans approved that state’s amendment with 57.2% of votes as of early Wednesday afternoon. The measures in Arizona and Nevada passed with 61.7% and 63.3% of votes, respectively, also as of Wednesday. Ballot measures to amend the constitution in Nevada must pass in two consecutive general elections, so the Nevada amendment will be up for a vote again in 2026.

“It’s pretty clear that it passed because voters believed the lies proponents fed them,” said Cindy Dahlgren, communications director for the It Goes Too Far campaign against Arizona’s pro-abortion amendment, Proposition 139. She said supporters “sold it as the way to ‘stop the ban’ and make sure women can get treatment for miscarriages.” She said both claims are false, noting that abortion is legal until 15 weeks in Arizona and state law specifically protects miscarriage treatment.

Like Missouri’s new amendment, the Arizona amendment will legalize abortion for any reason until fetal viability and afterwards for broad mental health reasons. The Montana and Nevada amendments are similar, but those states already allow for abortion under restrictions closely matching the amendments. Enshrining abortion into the constitution, however, will make it impossible for those states to pass strong protections for unborn babies in the future—unless they first remove the new language from the state constitutions.

Voters in three reliably blue states—Colorado, Maryland, and New York—passed their pro-abortion amendments by wide margins: 61.5% in Colorado, 74.1% in Maryland, and 61.8% in New York, though votes were still being counted. Opponents say the measures will endanger parental rights, including in decisions regarding surgical attempts to change the sex characteristics of minors in Maryland and New York.

Despite these seven losses, pro-lifers celebrated victories in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Florida. Americans United for Life noted in a statement that these results marked the first three pro-life victories in abortion-related ballot measures since the overturn of Roe in 2022. Before this year, pro-abortion campaigns had successfully passed amendments in California, Michigan, Vermont, and Ohio and defeated pro-life ballot measures in Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana.

“The results in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota give the pro-life movement a template for regaining those states that have lost ballot initiatives,” said Americans United for Life government affairs director Bradley Kehr in a statement.

South Dakotans voted down a proposed pro-abortion amendment with 59.3% of votes, preserving that state’s protections for unborn babies throughout pregnancy. With 51.3% opposition, Nebraskans rejected a constitutional amendment similar to the ones in Arizona and Missouri. Meanwhile, 55.3% approved an amendment backed by pro-life groups that protects unborn babies from abortion after the first trimester except for in cases of rape or incest or medical emergencies. Current law in Nebraska protects unborn babies from abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The Florida pro-abortion measure failed even with 57.1% percent support from voters. That state requires proposed constitutional amendments to surpass a 60% threshold.

But John Stemberger, president of Liberty Counsel Action and head of the grassroots campaign against the amendment, said the votes in support of the amendment weren’t necessarily votes in favor of the Democratic Party’s radical abortion policies. Voters, he said, “were just voting for the deception found in the ads” from the pro-abortion supporters, who styled the state’s current protections for unborn babies as endangering the lives of women facing illness during pregnancy.

“They didn’t really understand what this amendment was about,” he said. “We know that those people don’t … believe in removing parental consent, having no limitations on abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, and don’t believe in taxpayer-funded abortion.”

In Stemberger’s mind, the pro-life movement’s job is not done in his state and across the country. “We still have a lot of work to do to create a culture of life to persuade people’s hearts and minds on this issue,” he said. “There are still a lot of Floridians and Americans who are completely uninformed and do not have a conviction about protecting the unborn.”