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After much anticipation, acclaimed chef Nick Bognar’s limited-seating, 18-course omakase concept opens in the courtyard at sister restaurant Sado.

ST. LOUIS - After hitting 58 F for a high Wednesday, strong northwest winds are sending temperatures plummeting Thursday morning. Out the door temperatures will be falling into the teens and the gusty winds are making it feel like it’s in the single digits in spots. Let’s watch for slippery spots where we have some [...]

Peter Frampton, Patti Smith and Neil Young are among the artists who have donated one-of-a-kind memorabilia to the ASCAP Foundation’s fourth annual Holiday Auction. Frampton, who was inducted into the Rock & Roll…

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The hero worship of the family of American royalty has a dark side: a tendency toward conspiracism that fits with the MAGA movement.

The numbers don’t work for Trump, and neither do the politics.

The legislature could spend early 2025 debating how to upend the constitutional amendment on reproductive rights that voters just passed.

by Jeremy Kohler

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One month after Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion, Republican lawmakers in the deeply red state are already working to overturn it — or at least undermine it.

One measure would ask voters to amend the state constitution to define life as beginning at conception, declaring that embryos are people with rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The result would be to classify abortion as an unlawful killing.

Another proposal, aimed at repealing the abortion rights amendment, would ask voters to ban gender transition procedures for minors, tying the two issues together, despite the fact that the amendment did not address gender surgery and gender-affirming care for transgender children is already illegal in Missouri.

Other proposed amendments include stricter abortion limits, such as restricting access to cases of rape, incest, medical emergencies and fetal anomalies. These measures would impose additional requirements, such as mandating that rape survivors file police reports to obtain an abortion.

GOP lawmakers have also introduced a measure to raise the threshold for amending the state constitution through voter initiatives, which could make it harder to pass similar measures in the future.

The legislative moves follow the Nov. 5 election, in which the amendment to put abortion rights in the state constitution won by a 51.6%-48.4% margin. Starting Thursday, the right to abortion will be constitutionally guaranteed up to the point of fetal viability, while restrictions on post-viability abortions will remain in place.

In other states where voters approved abortion rights measures last month, there were no signs yet that lawmakers would also try to counter those measures.

Even before votes in Missouri had been counted, proponents of Amendment 3, as the measure was called, had anticipated that a victory would be met with efforts to somehow undercut abortion rights.

“These people will continue to rail against abortion,” said state Rep. Deb Lavender, a Democrat from the St. Louis suburbs.

Although Missouri already has a law recognizing life as beginning at conception, stating that unborn children have “protectable interests in life, health, and well-being,” the proposed constitutional amendment would go further. It would effectively elevate this principle to the state constitution and potentially complicate not only abortion rights but the legality of in vitro fertilization and the handling of embryos.

Several states have laws recognizing fetal personhood, but Missouri would be the second — after Alabama — to enshrine it in its constitution. That could create legal and ideological confusion or even conflicts, experts say.

“You could see voters saying, ‘I support a right to abortion,’ but also saying, ‘Life begins at conception,’ without understanding that you can’t have both of those things at the same time,” said Jamille Fields Allsbrook, a professor at St. Louis University School of Law and a former policy analyst for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The author of one of the personhood measures, Rep. Justin Sparks, a Republican from the St. Louis suburbs, said he was emboldened by the narrow margin of the abortion rights vote.

“A clear mandate has not been achieved,” he said. While the amendment had strong support in metro St. Louis and Kansas City and in the county that’s home to the University of Missouri, “the vast majority of the rest of the state voted in a different direction,” he added. “So I think it’s fair to again bring the question up.”

But state Sen. Tracy McCreery, a Democrat also from the St. Louis suburbs, noted that Sparks was going against the will of voters in the St. Louis area. “I find that even more disrespectful of the voters,” she said. “It wasn’t just voters that tend to vote Democratic that voted yes on Amendment 3. It was also Republican voters and independent voters, and I think that’s getting lost in this discussion.”

The measure to link abortion and transgender rights reflects the campaign before the election, when abortion opponents conflated these topics. Critics said this strategy seeks to distract from abortion rights, which had strong voter support, by capitalizing on voter discomfort with transgender issues.

While GOP lawmakers push these measures, the legal landscape around abortion in Missouri is already shifting. On Wednesday, a Jackson County Circuit Court heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri that seeks to strike down Missouri’s near-total abortion ban and other laws that regulate abortion. The lawsuit followed the passage of Amendment 3. Planned Parenthood said if it wins in court it plans to resume abortion services in St. Louis, Kansas City and Columbia on Friday.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has acknowledged that the amendment will legalize most abortions when it goes into effect, but he has said he intends to enforce remaining restrictions, such as a ban on abortions after fetal viability, a 72-hour waiting period and parental consent for minors.

Lawmakers are also pushing to raise the bar for passing constitutional amendments. Now, a simple majority is enough; that has allowed Missouri voters to bypass the legislature and pass progressive amendments that lawmakers oppose. A new bill would ask voters to pass a constitutional amendment requiring not just a statewide majority but also a majority of voters in five of the state’s eight congressional districts — a change critics argued would give disproportionate power to rural areas over urban voters. It would then be harder for voters to approve measures that don’t align with the priorities of the conservative politicians they tend to elect.

Earlier this year, a similar effort to make it harder to amend the constitution failed after Democrats in the Senate filibustered it.

Sparks criticized the Republican leadership in the General Assembly for allowing the failure, pointing to a Republican supermajority in both houses that could have passed the measure.

“We hold all the power,” Sparks said. “We hold all the procedural levers of power, and we can shut down debate in both houses any time, any day, for any bill we choose to.”

Florida shows how a higher threshold for voter initiatives might play out. In 2006, the state raised the bar for constitutional amendments to 60%. This year, a majority of voters — 57% — supported an abortion rights amendment, an even bigger margin than in Missouri, but not sufficient in Florida.

It’s not clear yet, though, whether any of the measures have enough support in Missouri’s General Assembly.

Lavender said that the campaign supporting abortion rights significantly outraised its opposition during the election. “It’s going to be difficult to overturn,” she said. “You’ll have the same money that supported it now going up against you.”

Inflation was a defining issue in the presidential election. Here's how climate change is making everything more expensive.

When visiting the new 1904 World’s Fair exhibit at the Missouri History Museum, visitors are met with many fascinations. There’s the scale model featuring people walking along the streets, trolleys coming into stations, and shadows of clouds wafting overhead. A visitor can see and read about souvenirs and other artifacts on display. The sounds of ragtime and …

Continue reading "The Family Behind the Iconic 1904 World’s Fair Ice Cream Photograph"

Jake McGowan of Columbia, IL joined the Real Rock Army today

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JINGLE! will give St. Louis an extra dose of joy this holiday season. The spectacular, multisensory experience will completely transform O’Fallon’s CarShield Field with an immersive holiday light maze made […]

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The 2024 Gateway Dirt Nationals return to The Dome at America's Center in St. Louis. The Gateway Dirt Nationals is the only indoor stock car race featuring Super Late Models, […]

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Here's the latest on the lead front: We estimate that by 2015, the US population had gained 602-million General Psychopathology factor points because of exposure arising from leaded gasoline, reflecting a 0.13-standard-deviation increase in overall liability to mental illness in the population and an estimated 151 million excess mental disorders attributable to lead exposure. As ...continue reading "Add mental illness to the list of lead’s sins"

The outbreak caused 115 illnesses in Missouri, including 13 hospitalizations.

Email from a friend: So one month out, I'm a bit surprised at how little I care about anything Trump-related. Usually, political obsessiveness, work avoidance techniques, etc. kick in after a couple of weeks of post-election frustration, but honestly, I legitimately have no interest in what this person does or says. Doesn't mean I don't ...continue reading "Are you tired of Trump’s vaudeville act already?"

A St. Ann man posted an ad for a pair of sneakers and reached a deal with a potential buyer. Around 3 Monday afternoon, two teens showed up to his home.

When the wind blows during the deep cold of winter, we feel frigid. But it's not the wind itself that is cold. Rather, it is what the wind does to the human body that makes us feel colder.