Ballot Measures: Missouri Rejects Abortion-Ban Amendment as Arizona and Nebraska Vote to Protect Girls' Sports

Virginia and Nevada wrote abortion rights into their constitutions, Idaho kept its law protecting unborn life, and Virginia voters removed the state's marriage amendment.

Voters in more than a dozen states decided measures on Tuesday touching the sanctity of life, girls' sports, marriage and taxes. The results were mixed for social conservatives: defeats on abortion in three of four states, but clear wins for girls' sports where those measures were on the ballot.

Life

Missouri voters rejected Amendment 3, which would have repealed the abortion-rights amendment voters narrowly approved in 2024, banned abortion except in limited circumstances, and barred gender-transition procedures for minors. About 55% voted no in preliminary results, according to Beacon: Missouri. The 2024 amendment passed with 52%. About 4.2 million ballots were cast on this year's measure, compared with about 6 million in 2024. A majority voted no in 13 counties, led by St. Louis city (85% no) and Jackson County (70% no); in Wright, Bollinger and Osage counties, about three in four voters supported the amendment.

Virginia approved Question 1, adding a right to "reproductive freedom," including abortion, to its constitution, and Nevada approved Question 6 on its required second vote, according to the Guttmacher Institute. In Idaho, voters rejected Proposition 1, a statute that would have created a right to abortion before viability and challenged the state's protective law, which remains in effect.

Girls' sports

Arizona voters approved a measure defining sex in school sports as biological sex, by about 58% to 42%, and Nebraska voters added protections for girls' teams to the state constitution with about two-thirds of the vote, according to Bloomberg Law and Front Office Sports. Similar measures in Washington (about 57% yes) and Colorado (about 52% yes) were leading but had not been called as of Wednesday. A separate Colorado measure barring gender-related surgery for minors was too close to call.

"Women should not again be asked to cede their opportunities just to make men comfortable," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said, as quoted by Bloomberg Law.

Marriage

Virginia voters approved Question 2, which removes the state constitution's 2006 definition of marriage as between one man and one woman and replaces it with language allowing two adults to marry regardless of sex, the AP projected, according to WTVR.

Why it matters

The results show that the girls'-sports question unites voters well beyond the conservative base, even in a year when the political tide ran strongly the other way. On life, the lesson from Missouri, as from Ohio, Michigan and Kansas before it, is that changing the law without first changing hearts rarely holds. The pro-life movement's most lasting work happens in pregnancy centers, adoption and foster ministries, and churches that walk with mothers in crisis. On marriage, Virginia's vote changes the state's constitution but not the church's teaching, and believers will continue to hold and gently explain the biblical view of marriage to their neighbors.

Results in Washington and Colorado were not yet called at our last check. Other measures, including several election-law proposals, will be reported once results are confirmed.

← Back to Faith, Family & Culture · Browse the Archive →