Abortion Ballot Measures Since Dobbs and What Voters Decided

Ohio held two statewide votes called Issue 1 in 2023, three months apart, and the first existed mainly to stop the second. The first, in a special election in August, asked voters to make it harder to amend the state constitution by requiring 60 percent instead of a simple majority. Nearly everyone understood why: an abortion rights amendment was headed for the November ballot, and polling suggested it could win a majority but perhaps not 60 percent. Ohio voters rejected the August proposal. Then on November 7, 2023, in an off-year election in a state that had voted for Donald Trump twice, they approved the abortion amendment with about 57 percent of the vote. The legislature had tried to move the goalposts, and voters had walked them back.

In short: Since the Supreme Court overruled Roe in 2022, abortion rights have won most of the ballot measures put to voters, including in Republican-leaning states like Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Montana and Missouri, while losing in Florida under a 60 percent threshold and in South Dakota and Nebraska. Legislatures responded by changing the rules of direct democracy, which is now where much of the fight happens.

How a measure reaches the ballot

Before the results, a word on the machinery, because most of the later fights are about it.

There are two main routes. In every state but Delaware, the legislature can propose a constitutional amendment and send it to voters, usually after a supermajority vote in both chambers. Kansas and Kentucky in 2022 were examples of this route: legislators who opposed abortion wrote the measures and put them on the ballot.

The second route is the citizen initiative, and only some states have it for constitutional amendments, fewer than half. The steps vary, but the outline is similar:

1. Supporters draft the text and file it with a state official, often the secretary of state or attorney general.
2. A state body or court reviews the measure, writes or approves its title and summary, and in some states checks that it covers a single subject.
3. Supporters collect signatures from registered voters, usually a set percentage of the votes cast in a recent election, sometimes with a requirement that signatures come from many counties or districts.
4. Election officials verify the signatures, and opponents can challenge them in court.
5. If it qualifies, the measure goes on the ballot, where it needs whatever share of the vote the state requires: usually a simple majority, sometimes more.

Each step is a place where a measure can be delayed, reworded or stopped. That is why the most important decisions in this story were often made not by voters but by ballot boards, secretaries of state and state supreme courts.

It also explains the map. States without a citizen initiative, such as Texas and Georgia, have had no ballot route for abortion rights supporters at all. In those states the question has stayed with legislatures and courts. Nearly every abortion rights measure in 2023 and 2024 was a citizen initiative, which is why they appeared mostly in states that allow them, including several that lean Republican.

The scoreboard in 2022

It is easiest to understand the record year by year.

In August 2022, Kansas voters rejected an amendment that would have stripped abortion protections from the state constitution. That vote, just weeks after Dobbs, set the pattern.

In November 2022, five more states voted. Michigan's Proposal 3 added a right to reproductive freedom, including abortion and contraception, to the state constitution. California's Proposition 1 and Vermont's Article 22 did the same, by large margins in states where access was already secure. In Kentucky, voters rejected an amendment that would have declared that the state constitution contains no right to abortion, the same move Kansas voters had turned down. In Montana, voters rejected a referendum dealing with infants born alive after attempted abortions, which medical groups had warned could expose doctors to criminal penalties in tragic end-of-life cases involving newborns.

Kentucky's result deserves a second look. It came in a state where a near-total ban was already in effect, and the amendment would have closed off any argument that the state constitution protected abortion. Voters turned it down, yet the ban stayed in place, because rejecting an amendment does not by itself create a right. In 2023 the Kentucky Supreme Court declined to block the ban. Winning a ballot vote and restoring access are not always the same thing.

Six measures, six outcomes on the side favored by abortion rights groups. That record included two states, Kansas and Kentucky, that Trump had carried easily.

Ohio in 2023

Ohio deserves its own section because it was the first state where abortion rights supporters went on offense with a citizen-initiated amendment in a Republican-led state, and because of how hard the state's officials fought it.

Ohio had enacted a ban on abortion after cardiac activity can be detected, roughly six weeks of pregnancy, in 2019. It took effect briefly after Dobbs before a state court blocked it. Supporters of abortion rights collected signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the November 2023 ballot establishing a right to make one's own reproductive decisions, with the state allowed to restrict abortion after viability as long as exceptions protected the patient's life and health.

The legislature's response was the August special election to raise the threshold. When that failed, the state ballot board, which writes the official summary voters see, approved language that used the phrase "unborn child" and described the amendment in terms supporters said were misleading. The state's highest court ordered some changes but allowed most of the language to stand.

Voters approved the amendment anyway. Afterward, Ohio courts began considering challenges to the state's restrictions under the new constitutional language, including the six-week ban.

The 2024 wave: ten states, mixed rules

In November 2024, voters in ten states considered abortion-related measures, the most ever on a single ballot.

Where abortion rights measures passed. Arizona voters approved a constitutional right to abortion until viability. Colorado voters approved one that also cleared the way for public insurance coverage; Colorado requires 55 percent for most constitutional amendments, and the measure exceeded that. Maryland voters added a right to reproductive freedom to their constitution by a wide margin. Missouri voters approved Amendment 3, which overturned one of the strictest bans in the country, by a narrower margin. Montana voters approved a constitutional right to abortion until viability. Nevada voters approved Question 6, which under Nevada's rules must pass a second time in a later election before it takes effect. New York voters approved a broad equal rights amendment that includes protections related to pregnancy outcomes.

Where they fell short. Florida's Amendment 4 won a clear majority, around 57 percent, but failed because Florida requires 60 percent for constitutional amendments. South Dakota voters rejected a measure that would have restored access; it had divided some national abortion rights groups, which considered its language too weak. Nebraska had two competing measures on the same ballot. Voters rejected the one establishing a right to abortion until viability and approved the other, which wrote the state's existing ban after the first trimester, with exceptions, into the constitution.

So the honest scoreboard is this: across 2022, 2023 and 2024, abortion rights supporters won the large majority of contests, including several in states that voted Republican for president, but not all of them. Where they lost, they usually lost under unusual rules or with a measure that divided their own side.

How legislatures and officials responded

Every win produced a counter-move. Most of them were aimed not at abortion directly but at the process.

Raising thresholds. Ohio's August 2023 attempt was the most visible. Other legislatures introduced proposals to require supermajorities for citizen-initiated amendments or to require a majority in a minimum number of counties.

Rewriting ballot language. Because the official summary is what many voters read in the booth, the power to write it is the power to frame the question. Fights over ballot language played out in Ohio, Missouri and elsewhere, with courts sometimes ordering changes.

Tightening petitions. Several states adopted new requirements for signature gatherers, verification and deadlines. In Arkansas in 2024, the state rejected an abortion petition over paperwork about paid canvassers, and the state supreme court upheld that decision, keeping the measure off the ballot.

Trying again. In Missouri, the legislature voted in 2025 to send voters a new constitutional amendment that would undo much of what Amendment 3 had done. Measures like that, and Nevada's required second vote on Question 6, mean that some of these fights do not end with a single election. Results from later elections are tracked on the topic page linked at the end of this post rather than stated here.

Repealing old bans. Not every legislative response cut against access. After Michigan's 2022 vote, the newly Democratic legislature repealed a 1931 abortion ban that had been on the books for decades. Arizona's legislature repealed an 1864 ban in 2024 after the state supreme court revived it, with a few Republicans joining Democrats.

Why the measures win where candidates lose

There is a puzzle in all of this that matters for progressives. In 2024, Missouri, Montana and Arizona voted for abortion rights and also voted for Donald Trump. In Missouri and Montana, Republicans won the statewide races on the same ballot by comfortable margins.

The best explanation, I think, is that many voters separate the question from the party. People who would never call themselves pro-choice and would never vote for a Democrat still do not want the government deciding what happens in a pregnancy. Ballot measures let them say that without changing anything else about their politics.

The 2024 results make the split vivid. In Montana, voters approved the abortion rights amendment on the same ballot where Democratic Senator Jon Tester lost his seat. In Missouri, Amendment 3 passed while Republican Senator Josh Hawley, an outspoken opponent of abortion, won reelection comfortably. In Arizona, Proposition 139 passed by a wider margin than any candidate on the statewide ballot won by. In Florida, the abortion amendment won a majority in a state Trump carried by double digits.

Turnout does not explain this away. These were high-turnout presidential elections, and the measures drew votes from people who also voted for Republican candidates. Exit polling in several of these states suggested that a meaningful share of Trump voters voted yes on abortion rights. The people who voted for both are not confused. They hold views that do not line up neatly with either party's platform, which is true of a lot of Americans on a lot of issues.

There is a lesson here for how progressives talk. Measures won when campaigns spoke about freedom from government interference, about doctors and patients, about exceptions and emergencies. They tended to struggle when they were seen as partisan projects. A movement that wants to keep winning these votes has to keep earning the trust of people who will never join it.

That is encouraging, and it is also a challenge. It shows how broad the support for abortion access is. It also shows that the support does not automatically translate into votes for candidates who share that view, and that Democrats have not always made the case to these voters that their other priorities, from wages to health care, are part of the same commitment to freedom over intrusion.

The case for leaving it to legislatures

Opponents of these measures have made an argument worth stating carefully. They say that constitutional amendments lock a contested policy into the state's founding document, beyond the reach of future legislatures. They argue that well-funded national campaigns, often with out-of-state money, can overwhelm local debate. And they say the language of some amendments, especially provisions about viability and health exceptions, is vague enough that courts will end up deciding what it means.

Here's a response, offered as opinion. Each of these points applies to every citizen-initiated amendment on every subject, including ones conservatives have supported, such as property-tax limits or bans on certain taxes. National money flows into both sides. And ambiguity in constitutional language is normal; courts interpret broad phrases like "liberty" and "equal protection" all the time. If the concern is that a contested question should not be settled by a direct vote of the people, that cuts against the very premise of Dobbs, which said the question belongs to the people of each state.

What you can do

The next round of these fights will be about both abortion and the rules for voting on it. Here is how to stay ahead of both.

• See what is coming in your state. The abortion on the ballot page tracks petition drives, proposed amendments, legislative challenges and results across the country.
• Be ready to vote, including in special elections. Ohio's August vote shows that the rules can change in a low-turnout summer election. The voting page lists every state's registration deadlines, ID requirements and mail and early voting options.
• Watch your legislature's moves on direct democracy. The representatives lookup shows your state legislators and their latest votes, including on proposals to raise thresholds or restrict petitions.
• Sign up to help. The organizations directory lists voting and health nonprofits in every state, including those collecting signatures and knocking doors for ballot campaigns.
• Learn the wider fight over voting rules. The voting rights and redistricting page covers how lawmakers shape who votes and how, of which ballot-measure rules are one part.