(LifeSiteNews) — Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is donating more than a million dollars to defeat a campaign to undo Missouri’s constitutional “right” to abortion as part of the billionaire’s efforts to support abortion-on-demand across America.
In November 2024, Missouri residents approved a state constitutional amendment establishing a purported “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” that applies to “all matters relating to (so-called) reproductive health care, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, (so-called) abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.” It prohibits the legislature from banning abortion until “fetal viability” and after “viability” if an abortionist claims that killing a woman’s unborn child is deemed “needed to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”
The amendment effectively invalidated the state’s near-total abortion ban, which only allowed abortion when allegedly necessary to avoid the mother’s death or “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” This summer, a judge cited the amendment to strike down several pro-life laws, including the in-person dispensing requirement that had banned mail-order abortion pills.
This fall, another amendment (Amendment 3) will appear on the ballot that, if approved, would ban abortion except for rape and incest in the first trimester or for “medical emergencies” throughout pregnancy along with banning taxpayer funding for abortion or youth gender “transitions.”
Live Action reported that Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat businessman who temporarily switched to Republican for his mayoral race before going independent until he returned to the Democrats for an unsuccessful presidential bid, donated $1.25 million to the pro-abortion PAC Stop the Ban, which is dedicated to defeating Amendment 3.
Bloomberg has a long history of using his fortune to promote left-wing causes such as abortion (including amendment fights in numerous states), climate activism, and felon voting. He also has a history of callousness on human life, once being caught on video advocating that medical resources be denied to the elderly and having been accused in a lawsuit of telling a pregnant employee to “kill” her baby (that he denied).
Whether his money will decide the outcome remains to be seen. In February, a St. Louis University/YouGov poll found that 47% of voters supported the amendment to restore abortion restrictions compared with 40% who were opposed and 12% were unsure. The findings are far from conclusive but indicate pro-lifers in the state have a strong chance of convincing a majority to back the amendment.
Thirteen states ban most abortions starting at conception; another five ban it at around six weeks, with additional states imposing a range of later restrictions.
Pro-abortion state constitutional amendments have been one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tactics to preserve abortion “access” without Roe v. Wade. Up until 2024, it had consistent success since the overturn of Roe using false claims that pro-life laws are dangerous to stoke fear about the issue among the general public.
After 2020, pro-lifers either failed to enact pro-life amendments or stop pro-abortion ones in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont, Kansas, and Ohio, prompting much conversation among pro-lifers about the need to develop new strategies to protect life at the ballot box as well as consternation within the Republican Party over the political ramifications of continuing to take a clear pro-life position.
Ten states had such amendments on the ballot in November 2024. Pro-lifers defeated pro-abortion ballot initiatives in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota, breaking the abortion lobby’s two-year winning streak, but amendments to embed abortion “rights” in state constitutions prevailed in the remaining states. Four abortion-related ballot initiatives are confirmed for the 2026 midterm ballot.