An ideological tug-of-war: Missouri split on abortion
On May 24, 2019, Missouri Gov. Mike Parsons signed the “Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act”, which banned abortion after the eighth week of pregnancy. This made Missouri the ninth state to enact restrictions on abortion in 2019 alone, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs blocked the law on Aug. 27, just one day before the bill was set to go into effect on Aug. 28. The bill is currently delayed in the Senate.
Representative Mike Moon (R-Ash Grove) is a co-sponsor of the “Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act” that was brought forward by Rep. Nick Schroer (R-O’Fallon).
Moon believes that the bill didn’t go far enough.
“When the bill went to the Senate before they sent it back to the state, they changed it and they took out what was the actual heart of the bill,” Moon says. “What they removed was the requirement for the detection of a heartbeat. And so when they took that out, I think that took the strength of the bill away.”
With the bill bogged down in the Senate, Moon plans to put forward new legislation that ignores the Roe v. Wade decision.
“I think we need to go for the jugular, proverbially speaking, and just get the state to consider legislation that will ignore the decision altogether and actually exercise our sovereignty as a state,” Moon says. He continued on, arguing that Roe v. Wade was just an “opinion of the court,” and not a law.
But how has it reached this point?
In 2014, Missouri was divided almost down the middle in an abortion poll. 45% of respondents said they were in favor of abortion being legal in all or most cases, while 50% said they wanted abortion to be banned in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center.
That is a stark contrast to the national numbers for 2019 in which 61% nationwide said they wanted abortion to be legal in all or most cases, compared to 38% who said it should be illegal.
Missouri is one of nine states to enact restrictions on abortion in 2019, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Alabama enacted a complete ban on abortion, while Georgia, Ohio, and Louisiana have passed restrictions that are similar to Missouri’s.
Saint Louis University political science professor James Gilsinan says that this is due to the larger role that religion plays in the everyday lives of Missourians.
“The Catholic Church has been, obviously, a very powerful voice,” says Gilsinan. “You have rural interest, fundamental Protestant interests that have also been largely anti-abortion. And so in Missouri, those voices have always had a place of prominence.”
Also, Gilsinan says, the fact that these “large pockets of conservative religious groups” in the suburbs and rural areas tend to lean heavily towards pro-life plays a factor in how the legislation is shaped.
Out of 114 counties in the state, the greater Kansas City and St. Louis areas make up just 17 of those counties. Jackson, Clay, St. Louis, St. Louis City, and Boone counties are the most liberal in the state, according to Politico’s election results from 2018.
The rest of the state is primarily rural, which is predominantly conservative.
Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, said that the divide between urban and rural has been a driving force in pushing rural voters to vote conservative. That leaves the suburbs to be the deciding factor.
Even so, he still thinks that there is more common ground than what has been reported.
“I don't think Missourians are as absolutely against abortion as the Republicans and the General Assembly would lead you to believe,” Squire says. “If it were to be voted on as a referendum, which Republicans have fought against allowing the voters to take a position on this, it would probably be voted against.”
University of Missouri-Kansas City professor Greg Vonnahme says that the divide in public opinion shows just how much Missouri has changed over the years.
“Even when Missouri was a blue state, I mean, it wasn't a blue state like California is a blue state today,” Vonnahme says. “There was a long period of time following the Civil War when southern states were solidly democratic and had been since the end of Reconstruction. It was just a conservative democratic state.”
Vonnahme credits the changes southern states went through in the 1970s and 80s when they became more conservative after being solidly Democrat for decades as part of the reason why Missouri changed as well.
Vonnahme has found that people who have no stance on the issue aren’t as vocal, and that is one of the reasons why Missouri seems to lean so far to the right.
“The people that care about abortion really care about abortion, and they're very active on it,” Vonnahme says. “Whereas most voters that have fairly moderate views on this aren't really attentive.”
While the debate over abortion will continue on, it will still be a hot topic dividing people among partisan lines.