Missouri abortion-rights campaign fundraising total at $22M one month before election

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FILE - Missouri residents and pro-choice advocates react to a speaker during Missourians for Constitutionals Freedom kick-off petition drive, Feb. 6, 2024, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Ed Zurga, File)

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FILE - Abortion opponents watch and pray as members of the media interview attorney Mary Catherine Martin of the conservative Thomas More Society, after Missouri’s Supreme Court heard arguments over whether an abortion-rights amendment should go before voters this year on Sept. 10, 2024 in Jefferson City, Mo. (Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP, File)

By SUMMER BALLENTINE

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A campaign to restore abortion access in Missouri so far has raised close to $22 million, finance reports filed Tuesday show.

The campaign reported bringing in more than $14 million between July and the end of September alone.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom seeks to undo the state’s near-total abortion ban and is one of nine statewide campaigns to enshrine abortion rights into state constitutions.

The campaign had close to $11 million in the bank at the beginning of the month to spend on advertising in the final weeks before the Nov. 5 election.

Donors to the Missouri campaign include model Karlie Kloss, who gave $50,000, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who last month chipped in $1 million. Other big funders include Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, Sixteen Thirty Fund and The Fairness Project, among others.

A Missouri political action committee opposing the abortion-rights amendment has raised about $212,000 and had less than $5,000 left at the beginning of October. The political action committee of the powerful anti-abortion group Missouri Right to Life so far has spent at least $637,000 opposing the amendment.

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Initiative petition campaigns tend to cost a lot of money in Missouri, and abortion ballot measures in other states have been hugely expensive.

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A 2022 fight over protecting abortion rights in Ohio cost a combined $70 million, with abortion-rights supporters pitching in nearly $40 million and opponents spending more than $30 million. The reproductive rights amendment passed with almost 57% of the Ohio vote.

This year, abortion rights groups have outraised opponents by a nearly 8-to-1 margin in campaigns for ballot measures across the U.S.