Voters in nine states are deciding next month whether to add the right to abortion to their constitutions, but the measures are unlikely to dramatically change access — at least not immediately.
Instead, voter approval would launch more lawsuits on a subject that's been in the courts constantly — and more than ever since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door to state abortion laws. In some states where the issue is on the ballot, it's already widely available.
If Missouri’s amendment passes and takes effect in December, the measure would not repeal a state ban at all stages of pregnancy or the layers of other regulations — including a 72-hour waiting period and 44-inch (112-centimeter) doorway rule for clinics — that forced Planned Parenthood to stop abortions in two offices years before Roe was overturned.
“A yes vote for this is not a vote to overturn anything. It is a vote to ensure that the courts will have to fight this out for a long time,” said Republican state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman.
Coleman, who is also a conservative constitutional lawyer, said the Republican-dominated Legislature could also go back to voters to ask them to undo the amendment if it passes.
Still, the measure would mean that “the wind will be at our back” in court fights to overturn restrictions, said Emily Wales, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which operates in four states and is the only group in recent years to provide abortions in Missouri. The last clinic in Missouri, run by another Planned Parenthood affiliate, stopped offering abortions just before Roe was overturned.
“It will feel tremendously different to us to say, ‘Missourians have a constitutional right. If you’re going to interfere with it, you’ve got to have a pretty good cause,’” she said.
There's some precedent for an amendment not settling everything right away. An Ohio measure passed last year all but undid a law that banned abortion after cardiac activity can be detected, at about six weeks and before women often realize they’re pregnant. Enforcement had already been blocked by a court. Ohio advocates have been prevailing in preliminary litigation against other regulations but those battles aren't finished yet, and they worry lawmakers will block the use of taxpayer funds to support access.
“Having fewer legal restrictions is not necessarily meaningful to someone if they can’t afford the financial cost,” said Lexis Dotson-Dufault, executive director of the Abortion Fund of Ohio.
The most populous state with an abortion ballot measure this year is Florida. It would take approval of 60% of voters to win. And Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis's administration has alleged fraud in the signature-gathering process that got it on the ballot. That could be the basis for a court challenge on whether the amendment would take effect on Jan. 7. Meanwhile, the measure's supporters are suing current and former state health department officials over their efforts to get TV stations to stop running one pro-amendment ad.
The office of state Attorney General Ashley Moody, a Republican who sought to keep the measure off the ballot, did not respond to an interview request.
A Nevada measure wouldn’t make an immediate splash because it would be required by law to not only pass in November, but in 2026 as well.
In Colorado, Maryland and New York — where the measure doesn’t say “abortion” specifically but bans discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” — abortion is already allowed at least until viability — generally considered to be after 20 weeks, with some exceptions.
Colorado's measure would also repeal a ban on using taxpayer funds for abortion. A new law would be needed for abortion to be added to health insurance for government employees and people with Medicaid coverage.
Arizona’s amendment would go into effect with a governor’s proclamation if voters approve it. The state bars abortion after 15 weeks — and most occur before then. Earlier this year, some Republican lawmakers in the political battleground state joined with Democrats to repeal a much more restrictive 1864 ban before it could be enforced.
In Nebraska, the ballot includes competing measures: One would bar abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions, echoing the current ban but leaving open the possibility of tighter restrictions. The other would allow abortion until viability.
To take effect, an amendment would need not only majority support, but more votes than the other measure.
In South Dakota, where abortion is banned throughout pregnancy, opponents and advocates have been fighting over a measure that would prohibit the state from regulating abortion in the first trimester and allow regulations for the second and third trimesters only under certain health circumstances.
If the measure is adopted and survives the challenge, it would take effect July 1, 2025.
Life Defense Fund is focused on its campaign to defeat the measure at the ballot box rather than what might come next, said group spokesperson Caroline Woods.
Dakotans for Health sponsored the amendment and expects the Republican-dominated Legislature to try to “thread that needle” and impose restrictions during the second trimester if the amendment passes, said group cofounder Rick Weiland.
And that would probably mean more lawsuits.
“This is an issue that’s never going to go away,” Weiland said.
FILE - Amendment 3 supporters Luz Maria Henriquez, second from left, executive director of the ACLU Missouri, celebrates with Mallory Schwarz, center, of Abortion Action Missouri, after the Missouri Supreme Court in Jefferson City, Mo., ruled that the amendment to protect abortion rights would stay on the November ballot in on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, File)
FILE - Anti-abortion protesters gather for a news conference after Arizona abortion-rights supporters delivered more than 800,000 petition signatures to the state Capitol to get abortion rights on the November general election ballot, July 3, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
FILE - Rabbis and supporters from around the country gather for a rally, one day after the midterm elections, to show their support for protecting abortion rights Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2022, in Clayton, Mo. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
FILE - Reproductive rights advocate Kat Duesterhaus holds up a sign as U.S. President Joe Biden and his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump speak about abortion access, as the the first general election debate of the 2024 season is projected on a outdoor screen at the Nite Owl drive-in theater, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
Israel says it has killed Hamas’ top leader Yahya Sinwar in a battle with Israeli forces in Gaza. Foreign Minister Katz called Sinwar’s killing a “military and moral achievement for the Israeli army.”
Sinwar was a chief architect of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that precipitated the latest escalating conflicts in the Middle East.
Earlier Thursday, Palestinian officials reported at least 28 people were dead, including four children, in an Israeli strike on a school being used as a shelter in Gaza on Thursday. Nearly 100 people were wounded in the strike in Jabaliya, according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency unit in the north.
Syria’s military said an Israeli strike early Thursday wounded two civilians and damaged a military post. Israel regularly targets military sites in Syria linked to Iran and to Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group and has escalated its campaign against Hezbollah in recent weeks, after a year of near-daily exchanges of cross-border fire.
Lebanon says more than 2,300 people have been killed in the past year and 77% of public schools are out of service, either due to their use as shelters or their location in areas directly affected by the war.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s security fence and stormed in, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish combatants from civilians. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people.
Here's the latest:
BERLIN — German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is calling on Hamas to release all remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza now that the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, has been killed.
Israel says Sinwar was killed in a battle with Israeli forces in Rafah on Wednesday.
“Sinwar was a brutal murderer and terrorist who wanted to destroy Israel and its people,” she said in a statement Thursday. “As the mastermind of the terror on October 7, he brought death to thousands of people and immeasurable suffering to an entire region.”
“Hamas must now immediately release all hostages and lay down its arms, the suffering of the people of Gaza must finally end,” Baerbock demanded.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s defense minister has hailed the Israeli military for killing Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar,
Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said Sinwar’s killing sends “a clear message to the residents of Gaza. The man who brought disaster and death to the Gaza strip, the man who made you suffer as a result of his murderous actions — the end of this man has come.”
Sinwar was killed in Rafah on Wednesday after an Israeli tank launched a shell at a building, causing it to collapse. The soldiers were on a regular patrol in Gaza when they encountered a number of Hamas militants. They were not specifically searching for Sinwar.
Photos of Sinwar published by Israeli media show a man wearing a bulletproof vest, surrounded by grenades, lying in the rubble of a building with a head wound. He was not surrounded by hostages or using them as human shields when he was killed.
BRUSSELS — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has condemned Hamas’ top leader Yahya Sinwar, who Israel says has been killed by Israeli troops in Gaza.
At a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenskky in Brussels on Thursday, Rutte told reporters that Sinwar “is widely recognized as the architect of the Oct. 7th, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel. I have condemned them, all allies have condemned them. Every reasonable soul in the world has condemned them. So if he has died, I personally will not miss him.”
JERUSALEM — Israel’s foreign minister has confirmed that Israeli troops in Gaza have killed Hamas’ top leader Yahya Sinwar, a chief architect of the Oct. 7 attack.
Sinwar has topped Israel’s most-wanted list since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war just over a year ago, and his killing strikes a powerful blow to the militant group. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas of his death.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz called Sinwar’s killing Wednesday a “military and moral achievement for the Israeli army.”
“The assassination of Sinwar will create the possibility to immediately release the hostages and to bring a change that will lead to a new reality in Gaza - without Hamas and without Iranian control,” he said in a statement Thursday.
This item has been corrected to show Sinwar as killed Wednesday and that his death was announced Thursday.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. has imposed sanctions on 18 companies, people and ships across Panama, the Marshall Islands, India and more for their alleged ties to sanctioned Houthi and Iranian financial facilitator Sa’id al-Jamal.
Captains of vessels transporting sanctioned Iranian oil and companies that managed and operated the ships that transported the oil have also been also sanctioned. The Treasury said Thursday that revenue from al-Jamal’s network enables Houthi attacks in the region.
Treasury’s Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith says his agency “remains committed to utilizing all available tools to disrupt this key source of illicit revenue that enables the Houthis’ destabilizing activities.”
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian medical officials say the death toll from an Israeli strike on a school where displaced people were sheltering has risen to 28.
The Israeli military said the strike on Thursday targeted dozens of militants who were meeting inside the school in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza.
Fares Abu Hamza, head of the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency unit in the north, said the death toll had climbed to 28, with another 98 people wounded.
Israel has been waging a large military operation in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war, for more than a week now. It has once again called on all residents of northern Gaza to flee south, and it allowed no food aid to enter the north for around two weeks at the start of the month.
Its forces have repeatedly returned to Jabaliya and other areas of Gaza after saying that militants had regrouped there.
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine government has evacuated dozens of Filipino workers from Lebanon, including one who urged thousands of compatriots to leave the war-hit nation before it’s too late.
The 45 Filipino workers and two children who arrived Thursday in the Philippine capital were a fraction of about 10,000 to 11,000 Filipinos, many of whom have refused to leave their jobs in Lebanon for their poverty-stricken homeland.
“I hope they would return home because it has become too dangerous there,” Felicilda Aboc, a 56-year-old who has worked for 18 years as a house helper in Lebanon, told reporters at Manila’s international airport. She recounted how a powerful blast two days ago shook the house where she worked.
The Philippine government has offered free chartered flights, cash and new livelihood training to encourage Filipinos in Lebanon to return home but has yet to issue a mandatory evacuation order.
“I was told that even if the bombs are in front of them, they may not go home as long as they still have employers,” Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega said of the many Filipinos in Lebanon.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it is looking into whether Hamas’ top leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in a military operation in Gaza.
The military said in a statement Thursday that three militants were killed during operations in Gaza, without elaborating. It said the identities of the three were so far not confirmed, but it was “checking the possibility” that one of the three was Sinwar.
Sinwar was one of the chief architects of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He was chosen as the group’s top leader following the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh in July in an apparent Israeli strike in the Iranian capital Tehran.
BERLIN — The German military says a German navy ship deployed to the U.N. peacekeeping mission off the Lebanese coast has intercepted and brought down a drone.
The military said a defense system on board the corvette, the Ludwigshafen am Rhein, brought the drone down in the water around 5 a.m. Thursday and that the drone’s explosive load detonated in the process.
It said it did not know where the drone came from. The military didn’t specify the location of the ship at the time of the incident.
The Ludwigshafen am Rhein is currently participating in the UNIFIL mission in Lebanon. Germany also has soldiers at the mission’s headquarters in Naqoura.
OSLO, Norway — Norway's foreign ministry says the Norwegian Embassy in Beirut has been evacuated after receiving a “bomb threat.” No one has been injured.
A spokeswoman said Thursday that the few Norwegian diplomats in Beirut are all safe.
“The acts of war in Lebanon make the security situation very unpredictable and tense. This threat is another example of that,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ragnhild Simenstad said.
“The Foreign Ministry is continuously assessing the situation, including the safety of our colleagues who work in Beirut. The embassy has already implemented measures, as we have routines for in situations like this."
An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in northern Gaza on Thursday killed at least 15 people, including four children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said the strike targeted dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who had gathered at the school.
The strike hit the Abu Hussein school in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza where Israel has been waging a major air and ground operation for more than a week.
This item has been corrected to show four children were confirmed dead in the strike, not five.
Read more here.
BEIRUT — A Hezbollah official says the aim of the group’s military command is to keep fighting “with all available means” to prevent Israel from achieving its goals and to eventually agree on a cease-fire.
Legislator Hassan Fadlallah told reporters Thursday that since Israel’s invasion began on Oct. 1, Israeli troops have not captured any villages.
Fadlallah says his group's aim is to stop the war, but he refused to go into details except to say Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker and caretaker prime minister are leading the efforts.
“Our goal today is to end the aggression. We will not go into any detail related to the mechanism or solutions,” he said, when asked whether Hezbollah still insists that it will only stop fighting once Israel’s offensive on Gaza stops.
Fadlallah says Israel has not been able to push deeper into Lebanon, stop Hezbollah rocket fire or create the conditions for its citizens to return to communities in the north near the border, which Israel says is its main war aim.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli strike on a tent camp in the Gaza Strip killed three men and wounded eight other people, including women and children.
The bodies were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah after the strike on Thursday. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies.
There has been no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza. The military says it carries out precise strikes on militants who shelter among civilians, putting them in danger.
Hamas-led militants triggered the war when they stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Some 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up a little more than half of the fatalities.
CAIRO — Iran’s foreign minister has paid a rare visit to Egypt to discuss regional tensions linked to Israel’s war with Iran-allied groups in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Abbas Araghchi met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi and other top officials on Thursday to discuss how to de-escalate tensions, according to an Egyptian statement.
Egypt was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel and is a close U.S. ally. Araghchi visited Jordan, another close U.S. ally, on Wednesday.
Israel has vowed to respond to an Iranian ballistic missile attack earlier this month, raising fears of a regionwide war that could draw in the U.S. and its allies.
Egypt and Jordan have repeatedly called for a cease-fire in Gaza, and Egypt has been a key mediator between Israel and Hamas.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it has killed a local Hezbollah commander in a southern Lebanese town near the border.
The military said Thursday that an airstrike on Bint Jbeil killed Hussein Awada, who it said was in charge of firing projectiles into Israel from areas near the town.
Israeli strikes in recent weeks have killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his senior commanders.
Also Thursday, the Israeli military warned people to stay away from two buildings in the eastern villages of Saraaine and Tamnine, in the Bekaa Valley, where Israel has carried out scores of airstrikes over the past two weeks.
TEHRAN, Iran — The chief of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has threatened Israel with more missile barrages if it strikes Iran.
“Do not repeat your mistake — if you misbehave, if you strike anything of ours either in the region or in Iran, we will again hit you painfully,” Gen. Hossein Salami said Thursday during a funeral ceremony for Iranian Guard commander Abbas Nilforoushan, who was killed alongside the head of the Hezbollah militant group in Beirut in September.
Salami says an Iranian missile barrage on Israel earlier in October in retaliation for killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Nilforoushan was the “tiniest” action by Iran. He says an air defense battery deployed to Israel by the U.S. will not prevent Iranian retaliation.
“We do know about your weakness, and you know too,” Salami said.
Iran is the main backer of Hezbollah and supports militant groups opposed to Israel across the region, including Hamas.
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria’s military says Israel carried out a strike early Thursday in the coastal city of Latakia, wounding two civilians and damaging a military post.
The military statement that was carried by state media did not give further details.
Israel regularly targets military sites in Syria linked to Iran and to Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group. Those strikes have become more frequent after exchanges of fire along the Lebanon-Israel border began in October 2023, with Hezbollah attacking Israeli posts in support of the Palestinians and its ally, Hamas.
The exchanges intensified over the past three weeks, and on Oct. 1, Israel began a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Long-range American B-2 stealth bombers have launched airstrikes targeting underground bunkers used by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, officials said.
It wasn’t immediately clear what damage was done in the strikes early Thursday.
However, there have been no previous reports of the B-2 Spirit being used in the strikes targeting the Houthis, who have been attacking ships for months in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
The Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel reported airstrikes around Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, which the group has held since 2014. They also reported strikes around the Houthi stronghold of Saada. They offered no immediate information on damage or casualties.
United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the B-2 bombers targeted “five hardened underground weapons storage locations in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.”
The strike also appeared to be an indirect warning to Iran, the Houthis’ main benefactor, which has targeted Israel with ballistic missile attacks twice over the past year. The nuclear-capable B-2, which first saw action in 1999 in the Kosovo War, is rarely used by the U.S. military in combat as each aircraft is worth some $1 billion.
Felicilda Aboc, who has worked for 18 years as a house helper in Lebanon's northern Tripoli city, gestures as she answers questions from reporters upon her arrival at Manila's International Airport, Philippines, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
In this photo released by U.S. Air National Guard, a U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber takes off from a Royal Australian Air Force base in Amberley, Australia, Sept. 11, 2024. U.S. long-range B-2 stealth bombers launched airstrikes early Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, targeting underground bunkers used by Yemen's Houthi rebels, officials said. (Staff Sgt. Whitney Erhart/U.S. Air National Guard via AP)
Damage to a home struck by a rocket fired from Lebanon in the town of Majd al-Krum , northern Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
A member of Israeli security forces surveys damage to a home struck by a rocket fired from Lebanon in the town of Majd al-Krum, northern Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israeli security forces survey damage to a home struck by a rocket fired from Lebanon in the town of Majd al-Krum, northern Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
The cross atop of Our Lady of Hadath Church appears in front of Beirut's Dahiyeh suburb, background, that remains in darkness after Israeli airstrikes, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
