Abortion Banned Again in Missouri Despite State Voting to Overturn Ban
On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court put the state’s near-total abortion ban back into effect by ordering a lower court judge to lift two rulings that had blocked its enforcement. It’s the latest blow in a long saga of trying to restore access in the state following the fall of Roe v. Wade and after voters passed Amendment 3. Abortion providers say they’ve halted care in response, though advocates plan to seek new injunctions to allow abortions to resume.
Missouri banned abortions after the Dobbs decision in 2022, but 52% of the state voted in November to codify the right to abortion until fetal viability in the constitution. Hours after Amendment 3 passed, the two Planned Parenthood affiliates serving Missouri—Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers—sued the state to overturn the ban, as well as multiple additional restrictions. (They did not challenge every restriction, notably one limiting minors’ access to abortions.) Judge Jerri Zhang ruled in December that the ban violated the constitution and, in February, she said that byzantine clinic license requirements were discriminatory—another saga that abortion advocates first started fighting in 2019. Zhang issued preliminary injunctions from enforcing the laws before a January 2026 trial. PPGP and PPGR resumed limited care after those rulings in February, offering procedural abortions up to 13 weeks, but not medication abortion.
But on Tuesday, the state Supreme Court’s two-page ruling said that Zhang’s preliminary injunctions did not meet the correct legal standard and ordered her to vacate, or lift, those injunctions, which means the laws can once again be enforced…for now. The court told Zhang to re-evaluate the case not on whether the plaintiffs would eventually prevail, but whether allowing abortions to resume would cause harm.
The matter was only at the Supreme Court because of an appeal from Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R), who shamelessly tried to interfere with the passage of Amendment 3. In April, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill that allowed the AG to challenge preliminary injunctions and he appealed Zhang’s rulings days after the bill was signed into law.