Arizona abortion-rights supporters deliver over 800,000 petition signatures to the capitol in Phoenix in July to get abortion rights on the November general election ballot. Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press

An unprecedented number of abortion initiatives are on state ballots this November, nearly all seeking to protect reproductive rights, but opponents are trying to defeat them even before the start of voting through legal challenges, administrative maneuvers and, critics say, outright intimidation.

In Missouri, the Republican secretary of state pulled an abortion rights measure from the November ballot until the state’s highest court ordered him to include it.

In Florida, the governor’s election police arrived at voters’ front doors to question them about signing a petition for an abortion referendum – encounters that one man said “left me shaken.”

And in Arizona, the state’s Supreme Court allowed government pamphlets on the proposed constitutional amendment there to describe a fetus as an “unborn human being.”

Conservatives are “really supercharged,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California at Davis and expert on the legal history of abortion.

In part, the intensity reflects what’s at stake: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, every ballot measure put before voters has been approved, including in red states like Ohio. Those seeking to restrict abortion access have failed, even in conservative Kansas.

“A lot of abortion opponents don’t think they would win a fair vote, so they’re not trying to. They’re trying to find other ways,” Ziegler said, including capitalizing on “election-law technicalities to keep these proposals from going before voters.”

Challenges escalated this summer after the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the secretary of state’s rejection of one ballot initiative because proponents had not followed rules related to paid canvassers. The arguments in Missouri as well as Nebraska, where that state’s top court must rule by Friday, centered primarily on whether the ballot proposals’ wording is too vague and whether they addressed only a single issue as required.

“You’re seeing a period of experimentation because antiabortion groups haven’t found a winning recipe,” Ziegler added.

If courts in Nebraska and South Dakota allow the ballot measures there to remain, voters in 10 states from Nevada to New York will have the opportunity to enshrine a right to abortion or decisions about reproductive health care in their constitutions. A full sweep, despite the concerted efforts of Republican officials and the rulings of conservative judges, would significantly cut into the nearly two dozen states where the procedure is banned in most or all cases.

Given that several of these states could be crucial for the outcome of the presidential race, the ballot initiatives may have an added impact. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has claimed credit for the end of federal abortion protections, insists the issue should be decided by the states.

“The question in these next 55 days is groups on the ground making sure accurate information about what people are voting for is disseminated,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a Washington-based nonprofit that advises those running progressive ballot campaigns. “Especially in a presidential election, mis- and disinformation can run rampant.”

Arizona opponents of its ballot measure scored a victory last month with the court decision on the state pamphlets’ wording. However, the judges rejected their contention that the information provided during abortion rights groups’ petition drive “misrepresented and concealed the principal provisions” of the amendment – namely, that its “primary thrust” was a “wholesale dismantling of state abortion laws.”

Attorneys for Arizona for Abortion Access had argued that opponents were pursuing a “political quarrel masquerading as a legal claim” and that their political argument should be made not in a court of law but in “the court of public opinion.” Proponents submitted 577,971 signatures to ensure the measure reached that other setting – more than double the legal requirement.

“We wanted to send a resounding message about how much Arizona voters support abortion rights and want an opportunity to vote on it directly,” spokeswoman Dawn Penich said.

The state allows abortion up to 15 weeks of pregnancy, with later exceptions for cases of medical emergency. Proposition 139 would create the right to obtain an abortion any time before viability, about 24 weeks. After that point, “the State will not be able to interfere with the good-faith judgment of a treating health care professional that an abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant individual.”

“Our main concerns now are making sure that Arizona voters know where to look for us because we will have the longest ballot in state history,” Penich said. It will extend for two pages, with 13 ballot measures taking up the back of the second page.

Cindy Dahlgren, a spokeswoman for the “It Goes Too Far” campaign against the measure, said opponents have been doing outreach to better inform – not misinform – voters. “We are making sure that voters know they are not getting the full story. We explain to them what this vague language means,” she said. “This goes far beyond Roe.”

Polling in August shows lopsided sentiment, with 73% of voters saying they support Proposition 139.

Republican officials in Florida have taken a different tack, launching a “Florida Cares” website earlier this month – complete with the state seal – that claims the ballot measure known as Amendment 4 “threatens women’s safety.”

“Florida is Protecting Life,” it says. “Don’t let the fearmongers lie to you.”

The new website, which critics say is filled with “demonstrably false” information, is in addition to a financial impact statement that the Florida Supreme Court last month allowed to be included alongside the measure on the ballot.

According to the lengthy text, there is “uncertainty about whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds.” The statement then continues: “Litigation to resolve those and other uncertainties will result in additional costs to the state government and state courts that will negatively impact the state budget. An increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenue over time. Because the fiscal impact of increased abortions on state and local revenue and costs cannot be estimated with precision, the total impact of the proposed amendment is indeterminate.”

Supporters have blasted Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida House for the move. “They’re trying to cause confusion and hide the real issue: Amendment 4 is about ending Florida’s extreme abortion ban, which outlaws abortion before many women even realize they are pregnant,” said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for “Yes on 4.”

The campaign has raised more than $51 million, while DeSantis’s political committee, the Florida Freedom Fund, has raised only $3.7 million as of the most recent filing. The latest polls show that a majority of voters – though less than the 60% needed for passage – back the amendment. It would allow abortions “before viability.”

Trump, a Florida voter, has waffled on the measure but now says he will vote against it. The governor has warned that the 56-word amendment would mark the end of the state’s antiabortion movement. Mat Staver, the Orlando-based founder and chairman of the conservative legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel, does not disagree.

“If this passes … we’ll be worse than we were,” he said last week. “That will make Florida clearly an abortion destination.”

Supporters collected 996,512 signatures, more than 100,000 beyond the number required to place the issue on the ballot. But in recent weeks, saying it was working to combat fraud, DeSantis’s administration has deployed elections police to check up on some of those voters.

“This is not what government is supposed to be, this is not what government is supposed to do,” Michelle Morton of ACLU of Florida said Wednesday.

The forces behind the Missouri proposal found themselves fighting efforts by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft – son of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft – first to amend the measure’s summary language and then to remove it altogether on the eve of ballots being finalized this week.

“These last-ditch efforts from antiabortion activists and politicians are blatantly trying to stop people from voting because they know they’re going to lose,” said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes. She said similar “shenanigans” took place in Kansas last year, where antiabortion groups called police on signature collectors.

Nebraska’s Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday on two competing ballot petitions that were certified in August by Secretary of State Bob Evnen. At the time, he said it was likely the first time the state had two initiatives on the same topic in one election year. Should both remain on the ballot in November, whichever garners more votes will take effect.

On the one side, the Protect the Right to Abortion petition seeks to amend the state’s constitution to provide “all persons the fundamental right to an abortion without interference from the state” until fetal viability.

On the other side, the Protect Women and Children petition seeks to amend the constitution to say that “unborn children shall be protected from abortion in the second and third trimesters” of pregnancy except in the case of a medical emergency, rape or incest.

The abortion opponents’ language would enshrine Nebraska’s current prohibition into the constitution. The legislature passed that 12-week restriction in 2023. It includes exceptions for rape and incest, and to save the life of the pregnant person, but not for fatal fetal anomalies. It does not protect doctors who perform abortions from criminal prosecution.

Opponents of the abortion rights measure have argued that its wording is too vague and rolls too many issues into one ballot question – which would violate the state’s prohibition against addressing more than one subject in a bill or ballot proposal. They say the measure deals with abortion rights before viability as well as raises questions about how the state should regulate abortion.

“You can’t stick them all in the same initiative – that’s unfair. That’s our basic argument,” said attorney Matt Heffron of the conservative Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based nonprofit law firm that filed the challenge in Nebraska.

In a separate case, lawyers for Protect the Right to Abortion argued Monday that if the court dismisses one petition due to violations of the “single issue” rule, then it should dismiss the other petition as well.

The justices’ tight timeline for a decision is because the state’s ballot must be certified Friday.