2026 Abortion-Related Ballot Measures

Voters in 2026 will once again have the opportunity to reshape the reproductive health landscape in the United States. Abortion-related measures are certified for the ballot in this fall’s election in Missouri and Nevada, and could make it onto ballots in another handful of states. While popular support for reproductive rights and legal abortion remains high in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision reversing Roe v. Wade, several of the 2026 measures would undo reproductive-rights-supporting measures or recognize fetal rights — a reminder that a successful ballot measure hardly ends state debate about abortion.

Measures Recognizing Rights

In four states that span the ideological spectrum, voters in 2026 will likely consider measures that establish or strengthen reproductive rights.

In politically divided states that protect reproductive rights, ballot measures can be especially consequential. That is true of Nevada, where voters can only amend the state constitution following two affirmative public votes in consecutive even-year elections. In 2024, Nevadans voted overwhelmingly in favor of Question 6, which recognizes a fundamental right to abortion; a second vote in favor would finally approve the amendment. Abortion in Nevada is already legal until the 24th week of pregnancy because of a ballot measure passed in the 1990s.

Still, Question 6 will be impactful. Its backers argue an amendment would create more durable protections and offer a tool to challenge existing regulations in the state. Last year, for example, a court lifted an injunction blocking the enforcement of a state law requiring parental notification before a minor can secure an abortion. A new challenge to the law by Planned Parenthood is pending before the Nevada Supreme Court.

The state’s Republican governor has also shown a willingness to veto reproductive rights measures, including a recent bill that would have protected IVF and required it be covered under the state’s Medicaid program. Voter approval in November of Question 6 could give reproductive rights in a stronger foundation in Nevada.

The same is true in Virginia, where voters will consider a constitutional amendment this year protecting “the right to make and effectuate one’s own decisions about all matters related to one’s pregnancy.” Virginia’s constitutional amendment processes require that the legislature twice approve a ballot measure (with an election between) before a measure can go before voters. The measure first received legislative approval in early 2025; this month, lawmakers approved it a second time, guaranteeing that the measure will be on the ballot.

Under current Virginia law, abortion is broadly available until week 26 of gestation. The ballot measure could still make a significant difference because Virginia has historically been something of a swing state, with Republicans and Democrats gaining and losing control of the governor’s mansion and legislative chambers. An amendment would shore up reproductive rights against the preferences of shifting legislative majorities. As important, Virginia has become a destination state for out-of-state abortion seekers from across the South, and a successful amendment would preserve that point of access for patients.

Other rights-protective proposals could create more dramatic changes on the ground. The most significant effects might be felt in Idaho, a state with one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans. The Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act Initiative would recognize a state statutory right to reproductive freedom and privacy regarding “pregnancy; contraception; fertility treatment; prenatal and postpartum care; childbirth; continuing one’s own pregnancy; miscarriage care; and abortion care.” The measure has already sparked litigation: The state supreme court required the proposal’s backers to rewrite its short title to clarify that the ballot measure would legalize abortion until viability.

Before a ballot measure can go before voters, Idaho law requires that citizens gather a requisite number of signatures, equal to six percent of the total population in 18 of the state’s 35 legislative districts. In November 2025, Idahoans United for Women and Families announced that it had already gathered more than 50,000 of the 71,000 signatures required to get the measure on the ballot; the deadline to submit signatures is May 1. It is hard to gauge how much support the measure will garner if it makes the ballot, but a 2024 poll commissioned by Idahoans United showed that 63 percent of those polled opposed felony punishment for abortion providers, something the law currently requires.

A signature-gathering campaign is under way in Oregon in favor of a constitutional amendment that would explicitly establish that the state constitution’s equality language prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity, pregnancy, and sexual orientation, and protects contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, and gender-affirming care. The Oregon measure would also clarify that restrictions impacting these protections will be subject to strict judicial scrutiny, a demanding standard that in practice is very difficult to satisfy. Oregon already has some of the nation’s strongest protections for abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, but the amendment would reassure voters that these protections won’t change — and would send a powerful message by eliminating a now-unenforced part of the state constitution prohibiting same-sex marriage (a federal judge invalidated that provision in 2014, a decision confirmed in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling the following year).

Rights-Restrictive Measures

Abortion opponents gained some ground in 2024: Rights-protective ballot measures were defeated in South Dakota and Florida, and a measure prohibiting abortion after 12 weeks passed in Nebraska. Now, one ballot measure that would limit reproductive choice could go before voters. Another, while defeated for now, could be resurrected in the future.

In Missouri, supporters of reproductive rights won what was arguably their most striking victory in 2024. Missouri had imposed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, but voters in the state approved a ballot measure recognizing reproductive rights. Since then, Missouri has been something of a cautionary tale for backers of reproductive rights. The ballot measure notwithstanding, medication abortion remains broadly unavailable in Missouri, and only a handful of clinics offer surgical procedures. The state’s Republican attorney general has fought to preserve several abortion restrictions, such as Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers, known as TRAP laws, which include requirements that clinics have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and that patients wait 72 hours before receiving an abortion.

Then there is the 2026 version of Missouri Amendment 3, a legislatively referred amendment that would repeal the 2024 amendment, undo state reproductive rights, and prohibit abortion from the moment of conception with exceptions for fetal anomalies, certain medical emergencies, and rape and incest (the latter would apply only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy).

Drafters of the 2026 amendment have framed the measure in ways that increase both the odds that it will confuse voters and that it will pass. State lawmakers initially failed to indicate that it would repeal the 2024 amendment. Instead, they presented the amendment as permitting abortion in cases of fetal anomaly, medical emergency, rape and incest — even though abortion is already legal in the state under those circumstances. They also suggested that voters needed the ballot provision to ban gender-affirming care for minors, something that state law already prohibits. Reproductive-rights supporters challenged the adequacy of the ballot language, and a state intermediate appellate court required that the ballot language be rewritten to clarify that a “yes” vote would repeal the 2024 amendment.

There is an outside chance that Montana voters will consider a legislatively referred amendment defining person in the state constitution to begin the moment an egg is fertilized. Montana voters approved a reproductive-freedom amendment in 2024, but state Republicans argue that voters didn’t understand what they were choosing — and assert that fetal personhood is an issue of paramount moral importance that may even require discounting the wishes of the electorate.

When legislatures refer amendments in Montana, two-thirds of lawmakers must agree to move forward before a ballot measure goes before voters. The Montana personhood measure fell nine votes short of getting on the ballot. The close margin, however, suggests that the issue in the state isn’t resolved.

An Ongoing Battle

The measures likely to make the ballot tell a complicated story about the impacts of voter-initiated constitutional change. Supporters of reproductive rights see ballot measures as a way to strengthen rights in states that already protect them. Further, for those supporters, ballot measures may be the only way forward in states like Idaho and Missouri, where Republicans aligned with the anti-abortion movement are likely to control all three branches of government for the foreseeable future.

But not every state with a ban allows citizens to put an amendment on the ballot. And, of course, even in places that do, there is no guarantee pro-reproductive rights amendments would pass in deeply conservative states. Even when a ballot measure does pass, anti-abortion lawmakers in politically uncompetitive states have shown a willingness to narrow, reinvent, or seek to eliminate protections voters put in place.

Ballot measures will continue to be a major feature in conflicts over reproduction, but they are in no way a silver bullet for supporters of reproductive rights.

Mary Ziegler is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California Davis School of Law. 

Suggested Citation: Mary Ziegler, 2026 Abortion-Related Ballot Measures, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Jan. 20, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/2026-abortion-related-ballot-measures