Summary
Missouri voters have passed a ballot amendment enshrining reproductive rights in the State Constitution, marking a stunning repudiation of one of the nation’s strictest bans on abortion.
The amendment guarantees a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including decisions on abortion, and allows the state to restrict abortion only after fetal viability, except in cases affecting the mother’s health.
Missouri, the first state to enact a ban after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, is now also the first to reverse such a ban through a citizen-initiated measure.
Abortion rights advocates gathered record-breaking signatures, revealing broad support despite strong conservative opposition.
Our state regularly pulls this nonsense. Vote to keep right to work from happening, then vote in republicans. Vote to expand Medicare, vote in the people who prevent it even though we voted it in.
Right to work? Is this some euphemism for some awful employment laws, in the mould of the Australian Liberal Party’s (the Conservatives) “Work Choices” legislation?
Yup. So basically you get a union shop in one of the states where this hasn’t passed, it was voted in by the people working to be union and have representation. Representation has the costs, like the negotiators and lawyers that represent the workers. If a shop chooses that, anyone working there is paying dues to the shop, this sounds awful except the union jobs usually pay vastly better than the non-union jobs around here.
Now you don’t have to join the union, they do create “fair-share” fees, these fees cover nonpolitical costs of the union like collective bargaining. The unions are by federal law required to represent employees who don’t join the union, so this is what’s covered. Right-To-Work means that the fair share fees are gone, and people being people, means less people are throwing in to the pool until basically a union shop doesn’t have enough to pay for the representation. 26 of the 50 US states are right to work, the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that union shops in public sector are unconstitutional, so we have maybe 6% of US workers in unions.
In the Missouri case, the state legislature passed a right-to-work law and signed in, but a referendum came up (Missouri gets a lot of these, basically petitions come and they get voted on by the state. WHICH BY THE WAY the republicans also has tried to get rid of because of this, and abortion) and the states electorate repealed the law with a 2 to 1 vote, even deep red parts of the state were hard against that.
Now every time Right-to-work comes up on bill, it’s always characterized by the Republicans “It allows you to quit a job any time you want!” No, that’s At-Will Employment, and that’s also a shyster move because the more important part is that a company can let a person go at any point without reason, literally it’s harder to fire someone and get in trouble, like protected parts of race or gender or such. There is no grounds for recourse for the person, they’re just out on their ass. Only 8 states are not At Will.
Thanks for the in-depth response! These fair-share fees sound great, an anti-scab fee haha
It’s fucking infuriating. It’s a constant cycle of electing in dipshits that fuck everything up, spending the next 4 years fixing all their bullshit through ballot measures, and then reelecting them.
Every stereotype about us Missourians being idiots is 100% true.
Media is a powerful force. Wasn’t there some study that showed when people were asked about policies, without mentioning party affiliation, they tended to prefer progressive policies from Democratic candidates, even if they identified as Republican?