Missouri Anti-Abortion Amendment Would Make Abolishing Abortion Much Harder

Just last year, voters in the state of Missouri narrowly decided to pass Amendment 3, a ballot measure which enshrined into the Missouri state constitution a purported fundamental right to abortion.

Missouri residents were dismayed by the enshrinement of child sacrifice into their state constitution, especially with an outcome as narrow as 51.6% in favor to 48.4% opposed, and now desire to remove Amendment 3.

Pro-Life lawmakers in Missouri are working to pass House Joint Resolution 73, which would create a second ballot measure in the 2026 election to undo the decision from 2024. 

Many fail to realize that House Joint Resolution 73 would not merely overturn Amendment 3, but would explicitly enshrine abortion in certain cases into the state constitution. That would make the passage of a bill to abolish abortion in Missouri much more difficult.

Enshrining Exceptions

House Joint Resolution 73, which has the support of Pro-Life establishment groups like Missouri Right to Life and the Missouri Catholic Conference, says that the state government may “regulate the provision of abortions” and would enshrine into the Missouri state constitution that “an abortion may be performed or induced upon a woman in cases of medical emergency, fetal anomaly, rape, or incest.”

The measure protects the purported right to murder children conceived in rape but confines that murder to the first “twelve weeks gestational age of the unborn child.”

The term “fetal anomaly” is meanwhile defined as “a structural or functional abnormality in the unborn child’s gestational development that would make life outside the womb impossible,” a determination left to the abortionist who is financially motivated to murder the child.

House Joint Resolution 73 additionally says that “no public funds shall be expended” for abortions “except in cases of medical emergency, rape, or incest, as otherwise authorized by law,” meaning that Missouri taxpayers could be expected to pay for the murder of such children.

Rather than simply removing the abominable Amendment 3 from the Missouri state constitution, House Joint Resolution 73 actively codifies abortion in some cases.

No children should be legally executed for the sins of their fathers, and sickness or disability are not reasons for execution either. These truths should be obvious to those who claim to believe in the sanctity of life from conception, but establishment Pro-Life groups are nevertheless supporting lawmakers as they work to enshrine the legal murder of some children into the Missouri state constitution.

Pragmatic Partiality

God warns throughout the Bible that civil magistrates “shall not be partial in judgment” (Deuteronomy 1:17) and that “unequal weights are an abomination” (Proverbs 20:23). There are many prophetic warnings against “wicked rulers” who seek to “frame injustice by statute” (Psalm 94:20) or choose to “decree iniquitous decrees” (Isaiah 10:1).

While many of these Republican lawmakers and Pro-Life lobbyists may think they are employing prudential strategy in crafting a ballot measure they believe will pass, in the hope of mitigating the evil of Amendment 3, they are violating commands from God to exercise judgment without partiality.

They are practicing another kind of child sacrifice by withholding legal protection from some children in the hopes of saving others. They should instead categorically refuse to “do evil that good may come” (Romans 3:8).

Missouri lawmakers could have passed legislation to defy Amendment 3 during the 2025 legislative session. They could have established equal protection of the laws for preborn babies. Instead they voted down that legislation and abdicated their duty before God to abolish abortion. They washed their hands and shifted their responsibility to the voters to decide whether or not babies may be legally slaughtered in Missouri.

God calls on civil authorities to “punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Peter 2:14), but these lawmakers are instead choosing to once more enshrine the evil of child sacrifice, which provokes the wrath and judgment of God, into the Missouri state constitution.

These lawmakers are displaying cowardice and disobedience. They have failed to lead in righteousness and equity, and they have turned their backs on the most innocent image-bearers of God who they have the duty to protect.