Majority of states’ abortion ballot measures appear headed for victory

Measures to protect abortion rights failed in Florida but were on pace to win Tuesday night in nearly all of the other nine states where they were on the ballot, portending a significant win for supporters that could expand abortion access nationally for millions of women.

Should the trend hold, the results would extend abortion ballot successes even in deep-red states such as Missouri and Nebraska. They reflect many Americans’ belief that the strict abortion bans in force in 21 states following the fall of Roe v. Wade went too far. In the two years since, voters in seven states sided with abortion rights, including in conservative Kansas and Ohio. No initiative protecting abortion access had been defeated.

That streak ended Tuesday in Florida, where the abortion ballot measure with the greatest potential impact failed to reach the required 60% of voter approval – the highest threshold in the country. With just more than 90% of votes counted, 57% of voters had supported Amendment 4 while 43% rejected it.

Sarah Parker of Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group behind the “Yes on 4” campaign, told a couple of hundred supporters gathered in St. Petersburg that “we were the David in the story of Goliath.” She added, “This campaign was nothing less than a miracle. It gave a resounding voice to the voiceless, it gave a voice to all Floridians no matter their age, political affiliation or their gender.”

When the state’s six-week ban took effect in May, abortion advocates warned that it would effectively block access for up to 21 million women in a dozen nearby states that already restricted abortion. In Florida alone, 4.6 million girls and women are of reproductive age, and the new law forced anyone seeking an abortion to go to North Carolina or beyond.

The amendment would have enshrined a right to abortion in the state constitution. Supporters had mounted a vigorous campaign, drawing small donors and national groups that contributed more than $100 million. They tried to keep the issue nonpartisan, knowing they would need GOP voters – who far outnumber registered Democrats in the state – to pass the amendment. Yet they ran up against both opponents who sued to challenge petition signatures gathered for the measure and a state government juggernaut led by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

DeSantis used government resources to fight back, barnstorming the state in recent weeks to decry the measure as “deceptive.” He threatened to prosecute officials at television stations that ran an ad in favor of the referendum. And with the governor warning that passage would mean “the end of the pro-life movement,” his state health care agency created a website that condemned the amendment as “dangerous to women.”

Some voters who signed petitions in favor of the ballot proposal were even visited by state elections police, their signatures questioned. Those well-publicized law enforcement actions probably intimidated some voters, Amendment 4 proponents said.

Tuesday night, the governor declared a victory for opponents with a post on X: “Amendment 4 has failed.” Others quickly gave him credit for helping to block the amendment, which they labeled “barbaric extremism.”

“Florida showed that you could persuade voters with truth and reason, educating them on the dangers of Amendment 4, and revealing its motives to undermine the American family,” said Taryn Fenske, a spokeswoman for Vote No on 4. “Floridians’ commonsense, family-focused values prevailed.”

Though former president Donald Trump previously said he would vote against the measure – following a backlash from conservative supporters because of comments that suggested his support – he declined Tuesday to say what he marked on the ballot at his polling place in Palm Beach. Trump, in his bid for a second White House term, was able to claim Florida over Vice President Kamala Harris not long after the polls closed in the evening.

Opponents of the other state abortion measures being decided Tuesday – who again included state officials – also mounted vigorous efforts, contesting petition signatures in Missouri and Montana, and ballot wording in Missouri and Arizona. The Nebraska Supreme Court, confronted with two competing proposals to expand or limit abortion, ruled that both could go before voters there.

“It’s been a yearlong fight to get it on the ballot. There was a lot of stalling, and then they started challenging it in court,” said Ashley All, spokeswoman for Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights. A similar ballot campaign failed in Arkansas, where All noted that petition gatherers faced “opposition and intimidation and harassment.”

In Missouri, supporters went to court to stop Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft – the son of former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft – from changing the summary language of the proposed Amendment 3 and removing it on the eve of ballots being printed.

The amendment would create a right to abortion until “there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’ sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.” It would allow, however, abortions after fetal viability – about 24 weeks of pregnancy – if a health care professional determines it’s necessary to protect the life, physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.

At a victory party in St. Louis, the ACLU’s chief political and advocacy officer was feeling optimistic as she tracked results. With about three-quarter of votes tallied, the measure was projected to pass.

“For a state like Missouri to vote for Republican candidates and also vote to restore abortion access really sends a strong signal,” Deirdre Schifeling said, noting its historic hostility to abortion rights – enacting the country’s first abortion ban in 1825.

Its current law is one of the most restrictive in the nation, with no exceptions for rape or incest. “We feel pretty sure that (voters) are going to reject that,” Schifeling said.

Jessica Bobal, 42, a middle school teacher from the Kansas City suburb of Lee’s Summit, said Tuesday afternoon that she voted for both Harris and Amendment 3 and against two of the judges who had tried to block the state’s measure from reaching the ballot. She wanted “to ensure that female health care is not taken back … and there are not further restrictions placed on females who require hormone-related health care,” Bobal said Tuesday afternoon. “That decision should be between that woman and her medical professional and not be dictated by the government.”

Arizona put abortion on its ballot after the turmoil of its highest court upholding an 1864 territorial law – passed before Arizona became a state – that prohibited and criminalized almost all abortions. The ban took effect for a brief period this spring before the state Senate repealed it and abortion again became legal through the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The question put to voters was whether to amend the state constitution to add the right to an abortion up to fetal viability. The measure’s language would prevent Arizona from banning abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb and would allow the procedure after that point to protect a woman’s physical or mental health.

“We feel really optimistic,” said Dawn Penich, a spokeswoman for Arizona for Abortion Access, noting that in canvassing voters, they found broad support regardless of party affiliation: “What we’ve seen is abortion rights are popular across the political spectrum.”

With nearly half of votes counted Tuesday night, the state’s measure enjoyed a huge margin.

After voting Tuesday, Anthony Taylor talked about Prop 139 ensuring women would get the health care they need.

“I don’t think anybody has a right to tell another person what to do with their body,” said Taylor, 58, a metal fabricator who supported Harris, too. “For some people, that’s a need. Things happen. That’s life. Life is messy.”

Not everyone who threw their weight behind the ballot measure chose Harris as their presidential pick, however, despite her strong and vocal defense of reproductive rights and the former president claiming credit for helping to overturn Roe. Tran Tran, who owns a small staffing business, voted yes on the abortion initiative but chose Trump for president, a decision based largely on economic factors.

“I’m a fiscal Republican more than anything else,” Tran, 59, said after casting her ballot at a Baptist church in Phoenix. “For me, I had to prioritize what the most important issues were for me right now,” said Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant. “I don’t necessarily agree with all of the things that he stands for.”

Both New York and Maryland, where the procedure had remained legal, put the issue on the ballot to better secure abortion rights, and their measures were projected as definite wins late Tuesday.

Voters also were asked to decide measures in Colorado, Montana and Nevada, three states where abortion has been legal but imperiled.

In Montana, passage would amend the state constitution to bar the government from denying the right to abortion before viability or when it is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.

“There’s an urgency,” said All, the abortion rights activist working there. Legislators have “made it their focus to chip away” at reproductive rights.

“Even though (abortion is) legal right now, it definitely could shift” if the state’s Supreme Court were to veer right.

Nevada’s amendment would ensure abortion access for the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, as current law allows, or later when a doctor has “reasonable cause” to believe the procedure is needed to “protect the life or health of the pregnant individual.”

James Meeks, 44, who owns a candle-making business, walked out of the gym doors at William K. Moore Elementary School in East Las Vegas and grinned for a selfie with his 19-year-old daughter. Both went for Harris and Question 6. It was his daughter’s first time voting.

The father of six – four of them girls – identified abortion as his top issue in the election: “Your ability to control your own body, that’s something no one should have the power to touch. Period.”

If Question 6 were to pass, the process for amending Nevada’s constitution through such a citizen-initiated measure means a second vote must take place in 2026.

Colorado in particular is an abortion refuge for surrounding states because the procedure is legal at all stages of pregnancy. Its ballot proposal, needing 55% of votes cast, would enshrine protections in the state constitution, along with requirements that Medicaid and private health insurers cover abortion care. With more than 60% of ballots tallied Tuesday night, the measure was projected to pass.

Nebraskans were confronted with the historic dueling amendment proposals, one to secure a right to abortion until fetal ability and the other to ban the procedure after the first trimester.

The latter, backed by antiabortion groups, included exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the pregnant woman.

When the final results are in, the initiative with the highest votes will win as long as it has a majority of votes and receives the support of at least 35% of those casting ballots. Late Tuesday, the measure expanding abortion rights was on track to prevail.

In South Dakota, which since 2022 has banned abortion without exceptions, voters were deciding a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit any restrictions on the procedure in the first trimester.

The wording specified that the state would be allowed in the second trimester to “regulate the pregnant woman’s abortion decision and its effectuation only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.” The state could still prohibit abortion in the third trimester, with exceptions for the life and health of the woman.

Regardless of how many abortion rights ballot measures pass, the ACLU’s Schifeling said one thing was clear for advocates: “It doesn’t solve the problem.”

“About half the states don’t even allow ballot initiatives. Really, the solution here is federal legislation to protect access for every single person in the country,” she said. “We can’t ballot initiative our way out of this crisis.”