Both of Missouri’s Republican U.S. senators last week endorsed the premise that the state’s voters should be able to weigh in on the strict abortion ban put in place last year. They also expressed support for exceptions for rape and incest victims, which the new law doesn’t allow.

Have Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt suddenly gone all wobbly on the GOP’s relentless campaign to stamp out every last vestige of biological self-determination for America’s women?

Not necessarily. But they both can follow referendum results and read polls — and those indicators overwhelmingly signal that Republicans in the post-Roe v. Wade world have vastly overreached in their anti-choice policies, to the point that even red-state voters are starting to rebel.

Thus the efforts in Missouri and other Republican-held states to make it more difficult for voters to protect abortion rights by referendum. It’s a cynical strategy that the voters of Ohio saw right through earlier this month, when they soundly defeated a measure that would have raised new barriers against a pending effort to pass such a referendum there.

Republicans in the Missouri Legislature this year similarly tried to move the goalposts to hamper a pending abortion-rights referendum effort here, and they are expected to try again.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have filed suit over the Missouri referendum effort, making a ludicrous legal argument designed to stall the process long enough to keep it off the ballot next year. And Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft continues his own cynical stalling tactics with deliberately biased ballot language (in blatant disregard of his statutory duty), which has spawned still more litigation.

The motive for all this anti-democracy mischief is obvious: Polls indicate that in Missouri, as in most of America, voters would endorse reasonable abortion rights if given the chance at an up-or-down vote — as voters in a half-dozen states, including deep-red Kansas and Kentucky, have demonstrated since Roe was overturned last year.

So anti-choice forces are pulling out all the stops to make sure the voters don’t get to be heard. Of course, that sounds bad even to most of those who oppose abortion rights. Which explains why Hawley and Schmitt last week both appeared to distance themselves from the most extreme efforts of their party on this issue.

“I think voters ought to be able to weigh in and in every state and jurisdiction they want to,” Hawley said at the state fair in Sedalia, as reported by the Post-Dispatch’s Jack Suntrup. Schmitt said it is “inevitable that the question will be presented to Missouri voters at some point.” Both specified that they favor exceptions to the state abortion ban for the victims of rape and incest.

Missouri’s law, as strict as any in the nation, bans the procedure from the moment of conception, with no exceptions but for vaguely defined medical emergencies. Doctors who violate the ban can face 15 years in prison.

Neither of the senators is known for moderation on culture-war issues, but both have practical reasons for backing away from the extremists on this one.

Hawley is up for reelection next year and could well find himself on a ballot that also asks Missourians to weigh in on abortion rights.

And Schmitt is as closely associated with Missouri’s extreme ban as anyone — a fact that seems to suddenly have him nervous.

After Roe’s reversal last year, Schmitt, in his official capacity then as the state’s attorney general, made a point of formally launching Missouri’s previously passed ban immediately and then crowing about it.

“With the Dobbs decision just handed down and a stroke of my pen — Missouri became the first state to effectively end abortion and has become the most Pro Life state in America,” he tweeted then.

Schmitt’s take on the issue last week was notably less enthusiastic: “As attorney general, my job was, by statute, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, to issue the legal opinion” setting the abortion ban in motion.

Picture that on a fundraising letter.

If Hawley and Schmitt truly believe voters should have their say on this crucial issue, they should call out their fellow Missouri Republicans to stop sabotaging the referendum effort. If they don’t, they’re complicit in that sabotage.