Life Should Be Protected by Individuals Stepping Up
This year, the Missouri Freedom Caucus was launched. In its first legislative session, its top priority was to reform the initiative-petition process. Without reform, 50% of voters, mainly from metros St. Louis and Kansas City, could enact into the Missouri Constitution such Progressive initiatives as protection for abortion.
After a Missouri Freedom Caucus filibuster, a Republican senate leadership agreement broken by delaying, and ongoing delay from a Democratic senate minority filibuster, Republican senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman pressed to be the lead person to motion for a vote believed to have had enough support to end the Democrats’ filibuster. Coleman introduced that motion, but then immediately withdrew it and substituted a motion to move the reform bill to a conference with the Republican house.
The house majority had already passed the version they wanted, so their leadership rejected the conference. Finally on the last day of the 2024 regular session, the Republican senate leadership refused to vote on the reform, instead ending the 2024 session early. The Republican governor Mike Parson, and also the Republican lieutenant governor Mike Kehoe when he was acting governor during the governor’s absence, failed to call the legislature back into session to take up initiative-petition reform. Kehoe subsequently won the Republican primary for governor.
Meanwhile, an initiative petition for abortion-protecting Amendment 3 was filed by Cardinal Glennon, Mercy, and St. Luke’s affiliated pediatrician Anna Fitz-James. Signed initiative petition pages were submitted, and the initiative petition was certified as compliant by the Republican secretary of state Jay Ashcroft.
Sen. Coleman (in a 180-degree turn from her earlier legislative maneuvering) and three other people sued Sec. Ashcroft to have him remove the amendment from the November 5 ballots. Republican-appointed circuit judge Christopher Limbaugh opined that petition signers had not been informed as required.
But a nominally nonpartisan-selected Missouri supreme court majority set aside Limbaugh’s opinion. These judges were select
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