JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri (First Alert 4) – Both pro- and anti-abortion activists have filed lawsuits challenging a question set to be placed on the Missouri ballot in November.

Shortly after a question legalizing abortion in Missouri was added to the November ballot, lawsuits were filed over the question’s wording and legality. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is named as a defendant in the lawsuits because his office certifies all ballot questions.

“It’s very normal. People go through the popular initiative process and if they’re successful, someone else sues them to stop it,” Ashcroft said.

The ballot is scheduled to be finalized on Tuesday, but the courts can make changes until Sept. 10. After that date, not even the state’s highest court can influence the ballot.

“This is critical because within 44 days we will be sending ballots to our military personnel stationed overseas and we need to make sure that everyone receives the same ballot,” Ashcroft said.

A lawsuit was accepted by the court on Monday. This one is also directed against the Secretary of State and was filed by a group of anti-abortion activists that includes Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman, Representative Hannah Kelly and Peggy Forrest, president of Our Lady’s Inn Maternity Homes.

This lawsuit asks that the Third Amendment be removed from the ballot entirely. The lawsuit claims that the ballot question does not specify which laws would be repealed if the amendment were passed and is too broad.

One of her lawyers, Mary Catherine Martin, said the Third Amendment would deprive people who are injured or killed during an abortion of legal protections.

“The amendment provides that no one can be penalized or prosecuted for assisting in the provision of reproductive care to another person,” Martin said. “If there is no longer a way to punish those who provide reproductive care, the same applies to malpractice.”

However, former Missouri Supreme Court Justice Mike Wolff interpreted the Third Amendment differently, as he previously told our Capitol Bureau.

“We would essentially be back where we were with Roe vs. Wade,” Wolff said. “If there had been a case of malpractice of any kind, Roe vs. Wade would not have protected the doctor.”

No court date has yet been set for this lawsuit.

Another lawsuit was filed by the same woman who filed the petition to put the question on the ballot, Anna Fitz-James. In her lawsuit against the Missouri Secretary of State, she claims the language chosen for the ballot was intentionally contentious and aimed at dissuading voters from voting for the question.

“The Secretary of State is drafting this language, and it is intended to be a true, accurate, impartial, unbiased and non-argumentative statement of what a yes vote on the amendment means and what a no vote on the amendment means,” said Tori Schafer, an attorney with the ACLU of Missouri.

The case is scheduled to be heard before a single judge in Cole County Court on September 4.

The full text of the ballot paper is:

“Would you like to amend the Constitution of Missouri as follows:

• introduce a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraception, and consider any state interference with this right to be invalid;
• Repeal of the abortion ban in Missouri;
• enable regulation of reproductive health care to improve or maintain the health of the patient;
• to require the Government not to discriminate in government programs, funding and other activities against persons who provide or receive reproductive health care; and
• Do you allow abortions to be restricted or prohibited after the viability of the fetus unless doing so protects the life or health of the woman?”

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