In a significant victory for abortion rights advocates, constitutional amendments to protect or expand abortion rights were passed in seven out of 10 states where they appeared on the ballot on Tuesday. Voters in Arizona and Missouri approved initiatives that will protect abortion rights until fetal viability and overturn existing abortion laws. However, voters in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota rejected proposed amendments that aimed to do the same, marking the first pro-abortion-rights ballot measures to fail since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
In states like Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New York, and Colorado, where abortion is already legal through fetal viability or has no gestational limits, measures were passed to formally enshrine these existing rights, preventing lawmakers from undoing protections in the future. In Nebraska, voters approved a measure to protect abortion rights in the first trimester while banning the procedure in the second and third trimesters, except in specific circumstances.
The defeats of the proposed amendments in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota break the winning streak for ballot measures supporting abortion rights since the fall of Roe v. Wade. In Florida, a ballot initiative to prevent restrictions on abortion before fetal viability failed to meet the required 60% threshold for approval. Similarly, in South Dakota, an amendment to regulate abortion in different trimesters was rejected, leaving the state’s near-total abortion ban in place. This outcome represents a significant setback for proponents of abortion rights in these states.
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