How Ballot Measures Will Change Abortion Access

Abortion rights found support at the ballot box in seven states on Tuesday, expanding access in already legal states and lifting bans in two others.

But support for abortion rights fell short in three contests. Proposed rights measures failed in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota — and in Nebraska, an opposing measure to restrict abortion won — meaning bans and restrictions will remain in place.

Abortion will become broadly legal again in Arizona and Missouri, and existing protections will be strengthened in at least four other states.

In Florida, more than 57 percent of voters supported a measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, but it failed because the state requires a supermajority of 60 percent for ballot measures to pass. Florida had been a critical access point for abortion patients across the South before a six-week ban took effect in May.

Nebraska voters faced dueling abortion ballot measures, and misleading ad campaigns may have caused confusion. A measure that will amend the state’s Constitution to restrict abortions after the first trimester, enshrining current law, won a majority of votes, while a measure to protect abortion rights fell just short at 49 percent.

South Dakota will continue to have one of the strictest bans in the country.

Before the election, 21 states banned abortion or placed gestational limits on the procedure. The winning rights measure in Missouri is the first to undo a full ban — one of the strictest in the nation and one of the first enacted after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Arizona’s 15-week ban will also become void in the coming weeks.

In Arizona, Missouri and Montana, the winning measures will recreate the standard set by Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion until “viability” — the point at which a fetus could survive outside the uterus, or around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

New constitutional amendments will expand protections for abortion in Colorado, Maryland and New York, where the procedure was already broadly legal. Colorado’s measure also repealed an earlier law prohibiting the use of public funds to pay for abortions.

In Nevada, a winning measure to protect abortion until viability must pass again in the next general election before it can be added to the state’s Constitution.

The 2024 election broke a ballot measure winning streak for abortion rights advocates. Voters in seven states, including Republican-led ones, had previously sided with abortion rights in every contest since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022.

Advocates for abortion rights caution that opportunities to protect those rights through ballot measures may be dwindling. Most remaining states with abortion bans do not allow citizen-initiated measures to be placed on the ballot, and their Republican leaders are unlikely to put the issue to voters.

And while former President Donald J. Trump has most recently said he would leave abortion laws to the states if re-elected, abortion rights organizations are bracing for federal action on abortion under his presidency.

“Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States is a deadly threat to reproductive rights,” said Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We have many states that protect abortion rights, and if a federal ban passes they will lose that ability to protect their residents’ access.”