(OSV News) — As ballot deadlines approach, Missouri joins Nebraska as states where ballot initiatives to enshrine legal abortion in their respective state constitutions this November now face court challenges.

Late Sept. 6 in Missouri, Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled against the proposed abortion amendment, declaring that the initiative campaigners, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, had not done enough while gathering signatures to fully inform voters how the measure would undo the state’s abortion ban.

Missouri law requires that the “full and correct text of all initiative and referendum petition measures” should also include “all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.”

Limbaugh rejected the campaign for having “purposefully decided not to include even the 8 most basic of statutes that would be repealed, at least in part, by Amendment 3.” The judge said that he “does not suggest that every initiative petition should speculate as to every single constitutional provision or statute that it could affect.” But he said the failure to include any statute or provision — such as the state’s ban on abortion except in cases of medical emergency — was a “blatant violation” of the law’s requirements.

Limbaugh — a cousin of the late conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh — did not remove Amendment 3 from the ballot; instead, he gave the initiative campaign the chance to file a last-minute appeal before the Sept. 10 deadline to make changes to the Missouri ballot.

The case now heads directly to the Missouri Supreme Court, which hears oral arguments Sept. 10.

Mary Catherine Martin, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based public interest firm, said in a statement that Amendment 3 “is designed to commit Missourians to allowing and funding an enormous range of decisions, even by children, far beyond just abortion.”

“We will not allow Missourians to be deceived into signing away dozens of current laws that protect the unborn, pregnant women, parents, and children,” Martin said.

Missouri’s near total ban on abortion, which has exceptions for the life and health of the mother, went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and related abortion precedents in the June 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The Missouri Catholic Conference, which advocates for the church’s position at the state level, has opposed Amendment 3 calling it a “deceptively worded amendment.”

“The amendment would effectively repeal long-standing health and safety standards for women,” the conference said in an Aug. 13 statement. “These include basic health and safety requirements for clinics where abortions are performed, requiring that abortions be performed only by a physician, informed consent requirements, laws prohibiting public funding of abortion, and parental consent requirements before a minor’s abortion.”

In Nebraska, the state’s high court is hearing a last-minute challenge filed by the Thomas More Society against an initiative to enshrine abortion in the state constitution as a “fundamental right” Sept. 9.

Nebraska, like Missouri, is one of 10 states with abortion on the ballot before voters Nov. 5.

The Thomas More Society brief accuses the “Protect the Right to Abortion” initiative of containing “remarkably misleading terms” and is “unconstitutionally riddled with separate subjects” in violation of the state constitution’s single subject rule.

The brief also contends the initiative’s language on a “fundamental right to abortion,” combined with the description “without interference from the state or its political subdivisions,” means virtually unregulated abortions. The brief claimed this would effectively “abolish popularly enacted Nebraska statutes limiting abortion and probably common medical regulation of abortion clinics.”

Since the Dobbs decision returned the issue of abortion back to legislatures, Vermont, California, Michigan and Ohio had successful initiatives to enshrine abortion in their state constitutions.

Along with Missouri and Nebraska, the states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, New York, Nevada and South Dakota also have abortion-related initiatives on their ballots Nov. 5.

Kurt Jensen writes for OSV News from Washington. Peter Jesserer Smith, national news and features editor for OSV News, contributed to this report.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — With ballot deadlines approaching, courts in Nebraska and Missouri are weighing legal arguments that could take measures seeking to expand abortion rights out of the hands of voters.

The Missouri Supreme Court will hear arguments this week in an appeal over a proposed amendment to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. And on Monday, the Nebraska Supreme Court heard arguments in three lawsuits that seek to keep one or both of the state’s competing abortion initiatives off the ballot.

One initiative would enshrine in the Nebraska Constitution the right to have an abortion until viability, or later to protect the health of the pregnant woman. The other would write into the constitution Nebraska’s current 12-week abortion ban, passed by the Legislature in 2023, which includes exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the pregnant woman.

Two lawsuits — one brought by an Omaha resident and the other by a Nebraska neonatologist who both oppose abortion — argue that the measure seeking to expand abortion rights violates the state’s prohibition against addressing more than one subject in a bill or ballot proposal. They say the ballot measure deals with abortion rights until viability, abortion rights after viability to protect the woman’s health and whether the state should be allowed to regulate abortion, amounting to three separate issues.

But lawyers opposing the abortion rights measure spent much of their time challenging the language of the proposal, with attorney Brenna Grasz insisting that its wording that “all persons” shall have a fundamental right to abortion would extend abortion rights to third parties. An example would be parents seeking to force a minor child to get an abortion.

“Is this a single-subject argument?” Chief Justice Mike Heavican asked.

Attorney Matt Heffron with the conservative Chicago nonprofit Thomas More Society, which has filed lawsuits across the country to challenge abortion rights, argued that the Protect Our Rights initiative logrolls competing subjects into one measure. It would force voters who support abortion up to the point of fetal viability to also support abortion after that point to protect the health of the mother, which they may not want to do, he said.

“This is a sea change in the current Nebraska law, which was popularly enacted by representatives, and each one of these should be voted on by the voters separately,” Heffron said.

Heavican countered that “virtually every bill that has gone through the Legislature” dealing with abortion has also included the subjects of exceptions and state regulation.

Heffron answered that lawmakers had the benefit of time and expertise to “hash out the terms” of those bills and that voters will go into the voting booth much less informed. But the justices noted that a nearly identical single-subject argument on an abortion rights ballot measure before the conservative Florida Supreme Court earlier this year failed.

An attorney for the lawsuit challenging the 12-week ban initiative argued that if the high court finds that the abortion rights measure fails the single-subject test, it must also find that the 12-week ban initiative fails it, too.

Attorney David Gacioch, of Boston, said that under the theory floated by opposing attorneys, the 12-week ban measure would loop in at least six separate subjects to include regulating abortion in the first, second and third trimesters and separate exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.

Gacioch acknowledged that insisting on separate ballot measures for each of those issues would be as specious as trying to break down the abortion rights measure into separate issues.

“We don’t think that’s what this court has articulated under a single-subject test,” Gacioch said. “We think that would frustrate the rights of the voters to pass constitutional amendments as reflected in the Constitution.”

The state’s high court has offered a mixed bag on single-subject law challenges. In 2020, the Nebraska Supreme Court blocked a ballot initiative seeking to legalize medical marijuana after finding that its provisions to allow people to use marijuana and to produce it were separate subjects that violated the state’s single-subject rule.

But in July, the high court ruled that a hybrid bill passed by the Legislature in 2023 combining the 12-week abortion ban with another measure to limit gender-affirming health care for minors does not violate the single-subject rule. That led to a scathing dissent by Justice Lindsey Miller-Lerman, who accused the majority of applying different standards to bills passed by the Legislature and those sought by voter referendum.

The court agreed to expedite Monday’s hearing as state law requires the November ballot to be certified by Friday.

In Missouri, the state’s high court will hear arguments Tuesday in its proposed abortion rights initiative, following that state’s enactment of a near-total abortion ban in 2022. The proposal had been slated for the November ballot, but a judge ruled Friday that the abortion-rights campaign did not properly inform voters during the signature-gathering process about the range of abortion laws the amendment could undo.

Tuesday is also the deadline to make changes to Missouri’s November ballot, so judges will have hours to rule on whether abortion will go before voters this year.

Abortion is currently on the November ballot in nine states. Additionally, a measure in New York would bar discrimination based on pregnancy outcomes but does not mention abortion specifically.

Abortion rights advocates have historically prevailed most of the time it’s been before voters – including on all seven ballot measures since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended a nationwide right to abortion. Since the ruling, most Republican-controlled states have implemented bans or restrictions – including 14 that now bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

With such high stakes, there have been court fights over most of the measures. An Arizona Supreme Court ruling is letting the state refer to an embryo or fetus as an “unborn human being” in a pamphlet; courts in Arkansas found paperwork problems with initiative submissions and kept the measure off the ballot. A measure is on the ballot in South Dakota, but an anti-abortion group is trying to keep the votes from being counted.

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Associated Press writer Summer Ballentine contributed to this report from Columbia, Missouri.

The Missouri Supreme Court will decide whether a ruling by a judge — who is also a cousin to late conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh — striking down a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state will stand.

After Missouri Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled late Friday that the ballot initiative known as Amendment 3 violated state law, the case bypassed Missouri’s court of appeals and headed straight to the state’s’ highest bench. Oral arguments are scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Tuesday — the same day ballots are supposed to be printed for absentee voters.

Missouri has a near-total ban on abortion that was put into place immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. A proposed ballot initiative known as “The Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative” proposed revising Missouri’s constitution to protect abortion rights by including the following language:

The Government shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which is the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.

The right to reproductive freedom shall not be denied, interfered with, delayed, or otherwise restricted unless the Government demonstrates that such action is justified by a compelling governmental interest achieved by the least restrictive means. Any denial, interference, delay, or restriction of the right to reproductive freedom shall be presumed invalid. For purposes of this Section, a governmental interest is compelling only if it is for the limited purpose and has the limited effect of improving or maintaining the health of a person seeking care, is consistent with widely accepted clinical standards of practice and evidence-based medicine, and does not infringe on that person’s autonomous decision-making.

More from Law&Crime: Justice Alito sets SCOTUS up for an abortion pill ruling that could be even more radical than overturning Roe v. Wade

Advocacy group Missourians for Constitutional Freedom produced more than 380,000 signatures from Missouri voters across the state in order to earn the measure a place on the ballot.

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, several states have begun the process of carrying out ballot measures that similarly protect abortion rights. The efforts have proven largely successful, even in conservative-leaning states such as Kansas and Kentucky.

Ten states, including Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Montana, and South Dakota, expect to present ballot initiatives on abortion to voters in the upcoming November election. Although polling suggests that voters support the ballot measures across the country, anti-abortion activists and lawmakers in Missouri and elsewhere have campaigned hard to try to keep the measures from getting on the ballot, proposing legislation that would make it harder to collect signatures or pass the measures, and encouraging voters who signed the petition to remove their names.

A group of anti-abortion activists sued the Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who certified the citizen-led ballot initiative for the Nov. 5 ballot, asking that the measure be kept from voters this fall.

The plaintiffs, represented by the Thomas More Society, include Republican state legislators Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman and Rep. Hannah Kelly, anti-abortion activists Kathy Forck and Marguerite Forrest. They argued that the amendment’s language could have unintended affects that go far beyond abortion, such as interference with state bans against gender-affirming health care and human cloning.

Limbaugh, a judge of the Cole County Circuit Court, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs Friday. In a 10-page ruling, Limbaugh said that the petition submitted by Anna Fitz-James constituted a “blatant violation of the sufficiency requirements” for placing the measure on the ballot. Limbaugh said that voters had not been sufficiently informed about the ramifications of the proposal.

Limbaugh said that if presented to voters as planned, the amendment could “result in a repeal of Missouri statutes or that it’s too confusing to determine which statutes would be repealed.”

Limbaugh, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Mike Parson after serving as his general counsel, said that his ruling would be stayed until Tuesday when the ballots are scheduled for printing.

Mary Catherine Martin, Thomas More Society Senior Counsel, praised Limbaugh’s decision in a statement

Amendment 3 is designed to commit Missourians to allowing and funding an enormous range of decisions, even by children, far beyond just abortion. The court’s favorable decision relies on only the most glaring decision among a range of consequences hidden by the drafters of Amendment 3. We are confident the reviewing court will also hold that Missouri voters have a right to know what they are voting on, and to vote on one matter at a time. Thomas More Society’s mission is to defend life, family, and freedom — wherever they are threatened. Missouri’s Amendment 3 threatens all three. We will not allow Missourians to be deceived into signing away dozens of current laws that protect the unborn, pregnant women, parents, and children.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom issued a statement Friday calling Limbaugh’s ruling “a profound injustice to the initiative petition process,” that “undermines the rights of nearly 380,000 Missourians.”

Campaign manager Rachel Sweet promised, “Our fight to ensure that voters — not politicians — have the final say is far from over.”

The appeal was fast-tracked to Missouri’s top court and scheduled immediately for oral arguments.

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