Senate committee hears legislation to reverse Amendment 3

By Fletcher Mantooth, Missouri News Network

A Senate committee Wednesday heard testimony on legislation that would roll back the protections for abortion set by Amendment 3 and block gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

Similar legislation was heard in the House earlier this month.

The legislation, Senate Joint Resolution 33, was authored by Sen. Adam Schnelting, R-St. Charles, and aims to put abortion rights back on the ballot in November 2026. Schnelting and other proponents of the bill argue that the language and advertising for Amendment 3 was misleading, which deceived many voters.

“The intent of the SJR is to present the voters with another choice that I believe is more in keeping with their values,” Schnelting said.

Similarly to when a joint resolution was heard in the House, opponents argued that voters did, in fact, know what they voted for.

“This General Assembly went way too far when it came to restricting Missourians’ medical care period,” Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, D-Clay County, said. “And that’s what this initiative petition was about. That was the moment that we saw them across the state. And so, it’s so frustrating to me that here we are spending very valuable time of the General Assembly to undo the will of the voters.”

No justification was provided for the language in the bill regarding gender-affirming care for minors, and it was rarely mentioned during the hearing. Opponents of Amendment 3 last year raised concerns that it would open the door for medical treatment for transgender minors.

If passed into law by voters, all forms of gender-affirming care, including hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers, would be banned for minors. A state law that bans those practices expires in August 2027, although there are efforts to remove that deadline.

The other item heard was SJR 8, authored by Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove. If passed, the resolution would ask voters next year to define a person as “every human being with a unique DNA code regardless of age, including every in utero human child at every stage of biological development from the moment of conception until birth.” Voters also would be asked to outlaw abortions without exceptions.

Speaking to the committee, Moon likened abortion to murder, and took the stance that abortion should be banned entirely and that there should not be exceptions made for cases of rape or miscarriage.

Moon, as well as others testifying in support, argued that life begins at conception and that all abortion, regardless of circumstance, is morally wrong.

“That’s what the Senate Joint Resolution seeks to do,” Moon said. “Allow us to enshrine in our constitution that even those who are developing in the womb are worth of the protection of laws that exist in our state.”

Many of those testifying in support of the resolution were pastors or representatives of religious organizations, who argued that the nation is founded on Christian principles and because of that abortion should be illegal.

“The question must be asked, what has God said?” said Noah Benz, a member of Church of the Word in St. Louis. “And so God is clear: what everybody else has testified, that all children are made in the image of God at the moment of fertilization, despite how they were conceived.”

Nurrenbern pointed out that the bill would be difficult to enforce, noting that it would be difficult to differentiate abortions from the natural occurrence of miscarriages.

“I’m very concerned of what we would do to target women, to criminalize women, to perhaps associate a Class A felony to a woman who something happened to her as by no choice of her own,” Nurrenbern said. “That is my fear.”