Missouri billboards falsely claim abortion referendum involves 'child gender surgery'

The billboards have popped up along both Interstates 55 and 170 around St. Louis. They’re along I-70 between Columbia and St. Charles, in central Missouri. And there’s one across from a shopping center in Cape Girardeau, along the Mississippi River in the state’s southeast corner.

In fact, as the Nov. 5 election approaches, motorists can see the billboards all over Missouri.

Each one spreads claims designed to undermine support for an abortion rights amendment that was placed on next month’s ballot through the state’s initiative petition process. Some billboards warn voters to “STOP Child Gender Surgery,” even though the amendment doesn’t mention gender-affirming care. Other billboards say it would permit abortions in the ninth month of pregnancy, though a state appeals court ruling in a case challenging the wording of the amendment’s summary on the ballot said that was not true.

Missouri’s abortion law, which bans nearly all abortions except in cases of medical emergencies, with no exceptions for rape or incest, was put into effect in June 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Amendment 3 would enshrine reproductive freedom in the state constitution, nullifying any law that restricts abortion before fetal viability, typically around the 24th week of pregnancy. The amendment would also safeguard other reproductive rights, such as access to in vitro fertilization and birth control. Polls show the measure is likely to pass — a recent survey showed 52 percent in favor and 34 percent opposed.

But abortion opponents, saddled with poll numbers that show their argument is losing even with the state’s largely conservative voters, are taking steps to undermine support for the amendment.

“Abortion rights are broadly popular all across the country, even in red states,” said Matthew Harris, an associate professor of political science at Park University, just outside Kansas City. “If you’re going to lose on the substance of that issue, you sort of have to try to make it about something else.”

The opponents have poured about $1 million into a late-hour misinformation campaign that has paid for radio ads and at least some of the billboards. The goal appears to be to sink the effort, or at least to try to redefine what it means to support it. Among the biggest contributors are John Sauer, the Missouri solicitor general from 2017 to 2023 who has served as a lawyer for former President Donald Trump.

Sauer, who has a long history of anti-abortion activism and represented Trump before the U.S. Supreme Court in his immunity case, has put $100,000 into a new political action committee — Vote “No” on 3 — that is funding many of the billboards, according to campaign finance reports. Sauer did not respond to voice and text messages to his cellphone. The PAC’s treasurer, Jim Cole, a longtime official with Missouri Right to Life, declined to comment.

Opponents are trying to capitalize on polls showing that Missourians oppose gender-affirming medical care for minors, which is already illegal for transgender children in the state, and allowing athletes to compete outside their birth gender. By combining the issues, political observers say, opponents are banking on confusing voters and building a broader base against the amendment.

The anti-transgender messaging in Missouri is part of a national trend, where Republicans are leveraging cultural issues like transgender rights to rally conservative voters in the 2024 campaigns.

Opponents are also strategizing about next steps if they lose at the ballot box. They are ready to shift their efforts to a more receptive audience: a state legislature dominated by deeply conservative politicians who have frequently acted against public opinion.

The Missouri General Assembly has a history of using “ballot candy,” where lawmakers add politically charged language they support to amendments to undo voter-approved measures that they don’t like. Some legislators have vowed to keep on fighting the abortion-rights amendment if it passes.

In 2018, for instance, voters overwhelmingly approved the Clean Missouri initiative, which aimed to reform some of the worst abuses of legislative redistricting. Two years later, Republican lawmakers introduced new ballot language that reframed the issue, focusing on minor ethics reforms while quietly seeking to reverse many of the changes in the Clean Missouri initiative. That repeal effort narrowly passed.

A similar tactic is evident in Missouri’s Amendment 7, which the legislature placed on this year’s ballot. While it is dressed up as a measure to ensure that only U.S. citizens can vote, something already required by law, its real impact would be to ban ranked-choice voting in the state, a move strongly supported by Republicans in the General Assembly.

Benjamin Singer, the former communications director for the Clean Missouri campaign, called the legislature’s action to undo Clean Missouri “brazen” and said the effort on Amendment 7 is part of a pattern. Singer, now chief executive officer of Show Me Integrity, a group focused on promoting democracy reforms in Missouri, said voters shouldn’t underestimate the lengths legislators will go to reverse popular measures.

“Think of the dirtiest trick in Missouri political history,” Singer said, “and plan for worse.”

State Rep. Brian Seitz, a Republican from Branson, said abortion-rights proponents were the ones playing tricks by trying to protect transgender men playing women’s sports and sex changes for minors. “What is Amendment 3 actually talking about? I say it’s a multisubject amendment that should not even be on the ballot. So might we look at those individual subjects? Of course, we will.”

Seitz said that if conservative lawmakers weren’t adequately representing the will of the people, “Why are we continuously elected?”

But while Missouri voters tend to elect conservative leaders into a legislative majority, many of the issues that resonate with voters tell a different story. Voters have rejected a law that would have allowed employees to opt out of paying union dues, legalized recreational marijuana and expanded Medicaid — policies at odds with the priorities those lawmakers have championed.

Those leaders this year tried to limit the ability of citizens to file amendments to directly change the constitution. Republicans wanted to include ballot candy in the measure that would have added unrelated issues about immigrants voting and foreign fundraising. But that measure went down to defeat after an all-night Democratic filibuster.

“Missouri voters don’t love the idea of government interference generally, but at the same time, they support conservative principles,” said Beth Vonnahme, associate dean in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City. “So when you have a candidate who’s advocating conservative principles, they win. But when you have amendments that are progressive but focus on government interference, they also tend to do pretty well.”

Before the abortion amendment made it on the ballot, it survived a number of legal challenges. In September, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to keep Amendment 3 on the ballot, rejecting claims that the initiative failed to list all laws it might affect.

Still, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Jefferson County and an architect of the Missouri abortion ban — and one of the plaintiffs in the state Supreme Court case — said amendment proponents are lying “by saying it won’t do some things that it very obviously will do.” She said that if Amendment 3 passes, the only way for lawmakers to undo the damage would be to put a new amendment on the ballot to overturn it.

Marcia McCormick, a Saint Louis University law professor who specializes in sexuality and the law, called the billboard claims highly misleading “straw man” arguments. She emphasized that while Amendment 3 ensures reproductive freedom, it is narrowly focused on fertility and childbirth.

Michael Wolff, a retired chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, said he was confident anti-abortion lobbyists are already working with legislators on a new amendment. Wolff, who helped advise the Amendment 3 proponents on ballot language, said he anticipated that the effort would lead with the transgender medical care issue, as the billboards have done.

He said lawmakers might lead a new amendment “the same way they started out with Clean Missouri — they started out with something that people would agree with,” adding, “Everybody with any resources that puts together ballot propositions is going to poll on what the voters will find attractive.”