AG Bailey puts his abortion beliefs ahead of Missouri voters’ — and he wasn’t elected | Opinion

The job of the Missouri attorney general is to support both the U.S. Constitution and the constitution of the state. It says so right there in the first line of the oath of office. But the current occupant of that office — Andrew Bailey, a Republican appointed by Gov. Mike Parson — says he can’t be expected to fulfill his obligations if voters amend the state’s governing document to expand and protect abortion rights.

He’d have to hire outside counsel instead, he claims. And that would cost big money. Allegedly as much as $21 million.

That’s what his office argued last week, in yet another tussle over the wording of proposed state constitutional amendments that would loosen the state’s draconian abortion ban — the first one in the nation enacted after the Supreme Court undid decades of precedent by overturning Roe v. Wade.

Bailey has “staked out a position strongly in favor of protecting the unborn,” according to the filing. If voters approve one of the amendments, and if that approval leads to lawsuits against the state, Bailey would find himself in a “a positional conflict that is untenable,” which in turn “would necessarily generate greater legal costs.”

In other words: Bailey wouldn’t personally uphold the Missouri Constitution if it’s not to his liking.

To be fair, state attorneys general and other lawyers run into conflicts of interest all the time. Hiring outside firms is a fairly common practice in such cases. So Bailey isn’t unusual in that regard.

This isn’t entirely about how Bailey runs his office, though. It’s about his continuing effort to put his thumb on the scale against the proposed abortion rights amendments.

If the attorney general has his way, after all, that $21 million price tag — again, the direct result of Bailey’s personal moral and political commitments — will be part of the ballot language that tens of thousands of Missouri voters will consider as they decide whether to put the issue up for election.

And it’s accurate to say that Bailey already has demonstrated a tendency to inflate the cost number to the greatest extent possible, in a transparent attempt to discourage voters from considering the reproductive rights amendments. He tried over the summer to inflate the price tag to $12.5 billion in (supposedly) lost Medicaid dollars. A judge rejected that attempt.

His current proposed number is much smaller, thank goodness. But it still rests on a pretty big presumption: that Bailey himself will be Missouri’s attorney general when and if the proposed amendments are to be defended in court, and that his own particular beliefs will dictate the eventual likely cost of the measures.

Maybe that’s correct. Maybe not.

Bailey wasn’t elected to his current position, remember. He was placed there by Parson after the previous attorney general, Eric Schmitt, was elected to the U.S. Senate. Bailey is now running to be elected in his own right in 2024. He faces a primary challenge, however and, if he prevails there, the general election after that.

He may well be victorious. At the moment, though, Bailey has not submitted himself or his agenda to Missouri voters. That makes his clearly biased influence on the amendment process less than welcome or desirable.

Then again, even properly elected Missouri Republicans have made it quite clear they don’t want the state’s voters — their own constituents — to make their own personal health care choices. A court last month quashed Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s proposed ballot language that said the measures would allow for “dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted” abortions. And that came only after conservatives in the General Assembly failed in May to make it much harder for voters to amend the state constitution.

Why the obstruction and discouraging words? It’s almost certainly because conservatives know that Missourians — like Kansans before them — will likely vote for abortion rights.

“I believe it will pass,” House Speaker Dean Plocher said in May of a pro-choice initiative. “Absolutely.”

All of which means that Bailey has made clear he is less interested in upholding Missouri’s laws and constitution than in pushing a far-right agenda on abortion. And he’ll do that even if it sets him at odds with the state’s voters.