A lawsuit has been filed challenging the inclusion of Amendment 3 on the November ballot. The proposed amendment seeks to amend the state’s constitution to create a legal right to abortion.
Filed Aug. 22 by the Thomas More Society, the lawsuit alleges that the initiative petition was erroneously certified by Missouri Secretary of State John Ashcroft, because it runs contrary to the Missouri Constitution and state statutes. The suit was filed on behalf of Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, pro-life advocate Kathy Forck, Rep. Hannah Kelly and Our Lady’s Inn President and CEO Peggy Forrest.
“The petition proposing Amendment 3 violated both state law and the Missouri Constitution, so the Secretary of State was wrong to certify it,” Thomas More Society senior counsel Mary Catherine Martin said in a statement. “Missouri’s laws require drafters to disclose the effects of initiative petitions on other laws and limit the effect of a proposed amendment to one subject, to protect Missouri voters from being defrauded by artfully drafting them into approving something that has hidden effects.”
Martin argued that the main provision of Amendment 3 would create a limitless “super-right” ranking higher than life, speech, religion, equal protection and due process. “This would require the courts, when making decisions relating to reproduction, to place this ‘super-right’ above the interests of anyone else, and even of society as a whole,” she said, and would repeal state statutes and constitutional provisions regulating other areas of reproductive care and technologies.
