This year, the Missouri Freedom Caucus was launched. In its first legislative session, its top priority was to reform the initiative-petition process. Without reform, 50% of voters, mainly from metros St. Louis and Kansas City, could enact into the Missouri Constitution such Progressive initiatives as protection for abortion.
After a Missouri Freedom Caucus filibuster, a Republican senate leadership agreement broken by delaying, and ongoing delay from a Democratic senate minority filibuster, Republican senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman pressed to be the lead person to motion for a vote believed to have had enough support to end the Democrats’ filibuster. Coleman introduced that motion, but then immediately withdrew it and substituted a motion to move the reform bill to a conference with the Republican house.
The house majority had already passed the version they wanted, so their leadership rejected the conference. Finally on the last day of the 2024 regular session, the Republican senate leadership refused to vote on the reform, instead ending the 2024 session early. The Republican governor Mike Parson, and also the Republican lieutenant governor Mike Kehoe when he was acting governor during the governor’s absence, failed to call the legislature back into session to take up initiative-petition reform. Kehoe subsequently won the Republican primary for governor.
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Meanwhile, an initiative petition for abortion-protecting Amendment 3 was filed by Cardinal Glennon, Mercy, and St. Luke’s affiliated pediatrician Anna Fitz-James. Signed initiative petition pages were submitted, and the initiative petition was certified as compliant by the Republican secretary of state Jay Ashcroft.
Sen. Coleman (in a 180-degree turn from her earlier legislative maneuvering) and three other people sued Sec. Ashcroft to have him remove the amendment from the November 5 ballots. Republican-appointed circuit judge Christopher Limbaugh opined that petition signers had not been informed as required.
But a nominally nonpartisan-selected Missouri supreme court majority set aside Limbaugh’s opinion. These judges were selected as candidates by Missouri bar following the Progressive elitist hard Missouri Plan, which was enacted into the Missouri Constitution by initiative petition in 1940 and was subsequently never repealed, even by Republican legislators and governors.
Media now presume, and most all politicians would themselves take this easy way out, that Ashcroft has no choice but to place the amendment on the November 5 ballots.
The bottom line? Majorities usually don’t protect even the most-fundamental rights—to life; next, to liberty; next, to secure property. Even when majorities do protect rights, these majorities are made up of individuals, who must each individually choose to act. So whether majorities protect rights or individuals protect rights, in every case every possible action comes down to individuals, one at a time, deciding to act and then taking action.
In Missouri, life has not been kept protected from abortion by Democrats, and has not been kept protected from abortion by most Republicans—including the many generations of Republicans who for 84 years and counting left in place the Missouri Plan for judicial selection, the current Republican senate’s nominal leaders, Sen. Coleman, Gov. Parson, Lieut. Gov. Kehoe, and Sec. Ashcroft.
But this can be changed now. Also, this can be changed any time in the future.
The USA Constitution has a bedrock rule that no person shall be unduly deprived of life. A new life, with new DNA, begins at fertilization. And life is a more-fundamental right than liberty from nine months of undesired pregnancy is.
Impeaching judges for misconduct and amending judicial selection would both require actions by majorities. Relying on majorities to protect rights, though, throughout all the years of legally-supported abortion, is what has gotten us to where we are now.
But the Constitution’s rule that protects life is backed by sanctions. Rather than penalties, the Constitution’s sanctions are in the more-subtle form of requirements—that each official, state or national, must take an oath to support or to protect the Constitution. These oaths confer to each official all possible power. Fulfilling his oath is each official’s solemn duty:
- Right now, Sec. Ashcroft, given his oath to support the Constitution, is required to remove from the November 5 ballots this amendment that would blatantly violate the Constitution by unduly depriving persons of life.
- Even if this abortion-protecting amendment would be enacted on November 5, every law-enforcement official from the governor to every policeman, and every judge, given their oaths to support the Constitution, would be required to treat this amendment as if it said nothing at all. The Constitution is the supreme law, any thing in the constitution or statutes of a state notwithstanding.
Individuals gain power by adding value that others are willing to pay for, or by being delegated some of the powers of the sovereigns, we the people. Every advance in freedom has been won by individuals using whatever power they have available to better secure individuals’ rights.
When you see a right being taken away, know for certain that there are people you can call on who can use their powers to right this wrong. With powers come opportunities, and responsibility.
