Missouri Republicans are trying to repeal the abortion rights voters approved in 2024 by bundling that repeal with a constitutional ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Trans kids are not the real target here: they are the instrument. The communities this affects share a common opponent, and recognising that is not optional any more.

What is actually happening in Missouri

Two years ago, Missouri voters were told that Amendment 3, a ballot measure to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution, would allow gender transition surgeries for minors. That was not true. They voted yes anyway, 51.6% to 48.4%, overturning a near-total abortion ban that had been on the books since Roe v. Wade fell.

Now there is a new Amendment 3 on the November ballot. Same name, different content. This one would restore Missouri's abortion ban with limited exceptions and permanently write restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors into the state constitution. The ballot summary, according to a judge who ordered it rewritten, did not tell voters it would repeal the rights they had approved two years earlier. It said the measure would "guarantee access" to emergency care and "protect children from gender transition." A former chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court described the original language as "intended to deceive."

The same electorate that voted for abortion rights is being asked to vote for a measure called by the same name, framed in terms of protecting women and children, that would take those rights away. That is not a political miscommunication. That is a strategy.

Trans kids as political cover

The inclusion of gender care restrictions in this amendment is what critics call "ballot candy." It is there because it polls better than repealing abortion rights. A survey of Missouri voters earlier this year found that nearly 60% supported legal abortion in the first eight weeks of pregnancy, while 67% opposed gender transition medications for minors and 73% opposed surgeries. Bundle them together and suddenly the numbers shift in the Republicans' favour.

Here is what makes it especially cynical. Missouri already bans gender transition surgery for minors. It already bars new prescriptions of puberty blockers or hormones for trans minors, through August 2027. The amendment would not create new protections for children: it would simply make the existing ones permanent and constitutional, removing any possibility of a future legislature revisiting them. The children being invoked in the billboards and the PAC websites are not in any immediate danger from a policy vacuum. They are in danger from the policy that already exists.

The PAC behind the campaign, Her Health, Her Future, whose treasurer is Missouri first lady Claudia Kehoe, declares that children are "not lab experiments." A billboard in the St Louis suburbs urges voters to "ban transgender surgeries for minors." Neither message mentions that the amendment would repeal the constitutional abortion rights Missourians voted for in 2024. Neither message needs to, because that is not what the campaign wants voters thinking about.

Why this is one fight, not two

I have spent years listening to trans people and their families talk about what it means to have their existence treated as a political question. I know how exhausting that is. And I understand the temptation, when you are already depleted, to focus on your own community's fight and leave the rest to somebody else.

But what is happening in Missouri makes something explicit that has been true for a while: the political forces moving against trans people and the political forces moving against reproductive rights are the same forces, using the same playbook. The logic is identical. Claim to be protecting children or women, use misleading language, bundle unpopular policy with popular-sounding framing, and trust that people will not read the fine print.

Trans kids are being used here as a wedge to undo a democratic result on abortion. That means every person who voted for abortion rights in 2024 has a stake in what happens to trans young people in Missouri. And every trans person or family who is watching their healthcare be dismantled piece by piece has a stake in whether reproductive rights survive. These are not parallel struggles happening to share a news cycle. They are the same struggle, being run against two communities by the same opponents, at the same time, on the same ballot.

What the Missouri Republicans cannot seem to learn

Missouri Republicans hold a supermajority in the legislature and control every statewide office. They have still watched voters use the initiative petition process to expand Medicaid, legalise marijuana, raise the minimum wage, and restore abortion rights. Just this month, more than 80% of voters rejected their attempt to make citizen-led ballot measures nearly impossible. More than 83% rejected the governor's plan to phase out the state income tax.

A political science professor at Saint Louis University put it simply: they think that because they control everything, they can do what they want, and they cannot.

What they can do, and are doing, is make the cost of that lesson fall on trans children, who did not ask to be in this fight and who are harmed by the existing restrictions regardless of what happens in November. The children invoked in the campaign materials are real. Their healthcare has already been restricted. The amendment does not protect them: it permanently removes any future possibility of restoring it.

There is a coalition called Stop the Ban that has raised more than $5 million to explain what the amendment actually does. That campaign matters. So does the broader recognition, which I hope is spreading, that the tactic being used in Missouri is not specific to Missouri. Using trans people as political instruments to limit other people's rights is a strategy that travels. The answer to it is the same wherever it appears: name what is happening, name who it affects, and refuse to let either community be picked off alone.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives of trans people and their families.