A single politician — Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey — is disregarding state law to delay signature-gathering on a reproductive freedom petition. He is trying to block Missouri citizens from exercising their right to vote on this ballot measure. Voters should know that democracy delayed is democracy denied.
When the U.S. Supreme Court last year overruled Roe v. Wade and later cases, it left the question of reproductive rights, including abortion, to the states. Most Missourians do not approve of the state “trigger law” that immediately banned abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Missouri voters have the right to use the ballot to change this.
But Bailey is disrupting the law’s orderly process to allow Missourians to vote on such proposals. His delay tactics are blocking proponents’ right to have sufficient time to gather 171,000 valid signatures needed to place their proposed amendment on the ballot in 2024.
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Missouri voters in 1908 approved the “direct democracy” method. Known as the “Initiative,” it allows citizens to propose changes to their constitution and laws by filing proposals with the secretary of state. The secretary is then required to give a non-argumentative and non-prejudicial summary of the proposals and to send the proposals to the state auditor, who assesses the probable costs to state and local governments.
The Initiative gives citizens a direct voice in their laws. It is a check on the Legislature, whose priorities sometimes do not align with voters’ preferences. In recent decades, voters — contrary to legislative preferences or inertia — have approved expansion of Medicaid, legalized and regulated medical and recreational marijuana, raised the minimum wage, approved stem cell research, and legalized gaming. This is “direct democracy.”
The Reproductive Freedom Initiative, if a majority of Missouri voters approve, would put in the state constitution the right of persons to make their own decisions on reproductive health care including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care (with limitations), miscarriage care and respectful birthing conditions.
State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick has done his duty. He has estimated the cost of the initiative to be $51,000. But Bailey refuses to do his duty of certifying the Auditor’s fiscal summary.
Instead, the Attorney General — who has no official role in calculating the fiscal summaries — contends that the fiscal impact should be billions of dollars, perhaps as much as $6 trillion, preposterous sums that the Fitzpatrick correctly rejects. In Bailey’s imagination, the billions and trillions of dollars apparently would be the value of lost future taxpayers who would not be born because women would exercise their reproductive rights. He also claims, without support, that the state would lose federal funds. His unfounded “calculations” are deceptive, to say the least.
In the proponents’ Cole County lawsuit, the judge ruled: “(T)he attorney general has no authority to substitute his own judgment for that of the auditor regarding the estimated cost of a proposed measure,” and ordered Bailey to send Fitzpatrick’s fiscal summary — as Fitzpatrick prepared it — to Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who has the duty to write a summary statement that the voters will see on their ballots, along with the fiscal estimate. Directly ignoring the court’s order, Bailey refused, and appealed to the Supreme Court of Missouri. The court will hear arguments on July 18.
Bailey’s view, as expressed to the Associated Press by his spokesperson, is that his office will “continue to use every tool at our disposal to defend the sanctity of life.” Some may agree with his view, but that is not how the law describes his job.
The Attorney General refuses to do what the law requires because he disagrees with the effort to give protection to the right of women to make their own decisions on reproductive health care. He alone stands in the way of allowing voters their say.
For many decades, Missouri officials have managed the initiative process, regardless of their personal view of a proposal. Occasionally the courts have intervened where the proposed ballot language was argumentative or prejudicial, but the courts have never permitted an attorney general to stand in the way of democracy for his personal beliefs.
Direct democracy, enshrined in our state constitution for 115 years, is at stake. We hope the Supreme Court approves the Cole County court’s ruling that Bailey must get out of the way. Missouri’s constitution and laws govern, not a lone politician’s personal preferences.
Marilyn McLeod of Columbia is president of the League of Women Voters of Missouri. Michael A. Wolff of St. Louis is a former judge and chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court.
