Organizers behind an abortion-rights amendment that will appear on Missouri’s November ballot filed a lawsuit last week alleging the “fair ballot language” written by the secretary of state’s office  is “intentionally argumentative” and bound to create confusion for voters.

Amendment 3 asks voters if they want to legalize abortion up until the point of fetal viability. Abortion has been illegal in Missouri, with only limited exceptions for the life and health of the mother, since June 2022.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft certified the measure for the ballot last week. On the same day, the office published on its website the amendment’s fair ballot language statement, which is meant to be posted at every polling place next to the sample ballot. 

The language listed on the secretary of state’s website as of Tuesday reads: “A ‘yes’ vote will enshrine the right to abortion at any time of pregnancy in the Missouri Constitution. Additionally, it will prohibit any regulation of abortion, including regulations designed to protect women undergoing abortions and prohibit any civil or criminal recourse against anyone who performs an abortion and hurts or kills the pregnant women.” 

“These politicians know that Missouri voters overwhelmingly support Amendment 3,” Rachel Sweet, campaign manager with Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, said in a statement. “So they resort to deceptive and misleading tactics.” 

Dr. Anna Fitz-James, the named plaintiff in the lawsuit, labeled Ashcroft’s language “unfair, insufficient, inaccurate, misleading, argumentative, prejudicial.” 

Fitz-James, a retired physician who lives in Missouri, first filed the abortion rights initiative petition in March 2023 on behalf of Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign behind the ballot measure which has raised several million dollars this year.

“Missourians are entitled to fair, accurate, and sufficient language that will allow them to cast an informed vote for or against the Amendment without being subjected to the Secretary of State’s disinformation,” according to the lawsuit filed in Cole County, which was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

Ashcroft, who recently finished third in the GOP primary for governor, has been vocal in his opposition to abortion.

“I am appalled that factions want to use the courts to misrepresent the truth to push a political agenda,” Ashcroft said in a statement Tuesday in response to the lawsuit, which also accuses him of pushing a political agenda. “I will always fight for the right of Missourians to have clear, understandable ballot language when they vote on such an important fundamental issue as life.”

The abortion rights campaign is asking the court to issue new fair ballot language and order that Ashcroft remove his current language from the government website. A court date has not yet been set.

This isn’t the first time the campaign has sued Ashcroft over the ballot measure. 

The initial ballot summary he drafted to appear on the ballot would have asked Missourians, in part, if they wanted to “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth.” 

A Missouri judge in September ruled Ashcroft’s language was “problematic” and inaccurate.

Ashcroft appealed the ruling, but the Missouri Supreme Court denied to take up the case. 

The new ballot language — approved by Missouri courts — will ask voters if they want to: 

• establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, with any governmental interference of that right presumed invalid;

• remove Missouri’s ban on abortion;
• allow regulation of reproductive health care to improve or maintain the health of the patient;
• require the government not to discriminate, in government programs, funding, and other activities, against persons providing or obtaining reproductive health care; and

• allow abortion to be restricted or banned after Fetal Viability except to protect the life or health of the woman?