On Thursday, Missouri’s Western District Court of Appeals rewrote the language for Amendment 3, the pro-life measure that will appear on the November 2026 ballot, after the judges ruled that the previous wording drafted by Secretary of State Denny Hoskins was not sufficiently clear.
The updated ballot language, drafted by the appellate court, reads:
“Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:
- Repeal the 2024 voter-approved Amendment providing reproductive healthcare rights, including abortion through fetal viability;
- Allow abortions for rape and incest (under twelve-weeks’ gestation), emergencies, and fetal anomalies;
- Allow legislation regulating abortion;
- Ensure parental consent for minors’ abortions;
- Prohibit gender transition procedures for minors?”
The judges agreed with Anna Fitz-James, the person who filed the lawsuit, on several points. They ruled that referencing “Article I, section 36” didn’t clearly tell voters what was at stake; that the 12-week gestation limit for rape and incest victims should be mentioned; and that language promising to “guarantee women’s medical care for emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and miscarriages” was misleading because the proposed amendment would not itself guarantee such care.
However, they disagreed with one of Fitz-James’s main arguments: the claim that the proposed amendment violated a statute prohibiting ballot measures from covering more than one subject (because it addressed both abortion and gender-transition procedures for minors). The judges ruled that these issues are sufficiently related and thus the amendment “passed constitutional muster.”
Further details can be found here via the Missouri Independent.