Hello and welcome to Newsair from the BBC World Service.

We're coming to you today live from St Louis, Missouri in the United States.

We're broadcasting from the studios of our friends and partners at St Louis Public

Radio just down the road from the soaring steel of the city's famous Gateway Arch,

the gateway to the west. It's long been a crossroads for people on the move, a

melting pot of European and African American cultures with a rich tradition of

music, blues, jazz and classical. And it is St Louis, whatever Judy Garland may have sung.

It's also part of America's Midwest, a key region as the country enters the final stretch of the presidential election campaign in early November.

It is home to two battleground states and home to both vice presidential nominees.

Well later on we'll be looking at what being a mid-Western means for people in Missouri.

But first we're going to look at one of the most important issues nationally in this election

and one that's actually on the ballot here in November, access abortion and just to give you the context in

2022 when the US Supreme Court overturned its landmark Roe versus Wade ruling to

protect a woman's right to an abortion, Missouri became the first state

to implement a near blanket ban on the procedure.

The only exception being cases where the mother's life was in danger. Now though that could be about to change even in this rock-solid

Republican state.

Voters here will be asked, assuming it gets the legal go-ahead today,

if they want to amend the Missouri Constitution and restore that

right to an abortion. That would end the need for women to travel to clinics outside

the state something thousands have had to do over the past two years. I've been

in hearing the experiences of one of them. It was heart-wrenching. It was a

...