Pro-life bills loom large in Capitol
- Apr 5, 2008
JEFFERSON CITY—Women seeking abortions will benefit in two ways if proposed legislation becomes Missouri law this year: they’ll have a better idea of what they’re getting into and they will be less likely to feel coerced into having their babies aborted.
Two identical bills have been introduced—one in the state House of Representatives and one in the state Senate—with the expectation that one will make it through the process and become law.
Senate Bill 1058 (SB 1058) was sponsored by Sen. Rob Mayer, R-Dexter, who attends First Baptist Church, Dexter, and co-sponsored by Sen. Jack Goodman, R-Mt. Vernon. House Bill 1831 (HB 1831) was sponsored by Rep. Bob Onder, R-Lake St. Louis, and co-sponsored by 33 other representatives, both Democrat and Republican.
Onder said the legislation has two goals—to assure that expectant mothers are fully informed before consenting to abortion and to assure that mothers are not coerced into having an abortion.
“It strengthens Missouri’s informed consent statute,” said Onder. In 2003, Missouri passed the “Women’s Right to Know Act,” which created a requirement of informed consent and a waiting period.
Onder further explained that the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the 24-hour waiting period but said the informed consent portion of the law did not add anything to the law already in existence on medical procedures. “This would give Missouri one of the strongest informed consent laws in the country,” he said.
Pro-abortion groups and abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, are resisting passage. They claim that laws on the books already provide for informed consent and for prohibiting coercion.
However, Kerry Messer, lobbyist for the Missouri Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission (CLC), countered those assertions on several points.
Messer noted that the legislation specifies which materials are to be given by a doctor to a woman seeking an abortion. That requires that they be given 24 hours prior to the abortion.
These materials explain who will do the abortion, how it will be performed, immediate and long-term medical risks to the mother, alternatives to having an abortion (including adoption), a means for the woman to reach the physician with questions, the location of a hospital within 30 miles where the doctor has privileges and where the woman may receive treatment in the event of complications, the gestational age of her unborn child, and the characteristics of the child at the time the abortion is to be performed.
Planned Parenthood said it currently provides that information by directing callers to its website where the information is contained.
The law would also require that pregnant women be provided with photos of unborn children in two-week increments through pregnancy and that additional information be included describing brain, heart and organ function.
Likewise, clinics are to provide each woman with the opportunity to view an active ultrasound of the unborn child and to hear its heartbeat, if it is audible. They are also to let women know of other locations where they can obtain an ultrasound, including those organizations that offer them free of charge.
Onder considers this to be an important part of this bill. “They do save babies’ lives,” he said.
Planned Parenthood indicated that it already has ultrasound equipment in its clinics. Messer said those ultrasounds are used to look for the position of the baby in order to kill it more efficiently. They are rarely positioned to show the womb with its limbs, beating heart and finite details like fingers. “They’re too busy telling women, ‘This isn’t a baby,’” Messer observed.
The woman must be told about the likelihood that a fetus past the 22nd week is likely to experience pain, and she must be told that she has a right to request anesthetic for her unborn child.
This provision is of particular concern to Onder, a medical doctor who has specialized in the field of fetal pain and anesthetics to unborn babies. He said he entered the political arena specifically to fight for life on abortion and bioethics issues.
Under the proposed new law, clinics that perform abortions will not be allowed to collect pre-payment for abortions at the time the first appointment is made. HB 1831 and SB 1058 require that payment be made at the end of the 24-hour waiting period, when the woman actually shows up for the abortion. According to Messer, the pre-payment becomes a clouding issue to a woman’s decision, financially hampering her ability to process the information.
The second point addressed in depth by the bill—coercion—makes it a crime to knowingly and intentionally commit acts with the understanding that those acts would force the woman to abort her child.
The Governor’s Task Force on the Impact of Abortion on Women most recently met in December. At that time it identified a number of ways in which women are coerced into thinking they have no choice but to abort.
Among those are pressure from family and friends, loss of a job, drug usage, an abusive spouse or partner, and other financial and psychological factors.
One particularly pointed aspect of the legislation would be the requirement that abortion clinics prominently display the statement that “No one can coerce you to have an abortion. IT is against the law for a husband, a boyfriend, a parent, a friend, a medical care provider, or any other person to coerce you in any way to have an abortion.”
The proposed legislation clearly defines coercion and penalties for various types of coercion. “The penalties depend on what was done to coerce,” Onder explained.
SB 1058 and HB 1831 were the main focus of Pro-Life Action Day March 11, sponsored by Missouri Right to Life.
The annual event is held to educate those who advocate for life and to encourage them to be actively involved in the political process. Most of those who attended the event also visited their senators and representatives on behalf of the following pro-life issues:
- HB 1625, which would provide protection for pharmacies to choose not to carry abortifacient drugs;
- HB 1984 and HB 1922, which would require more specific reporting of abortion statistics, such as methods of abortion used, reasons for seeking abortions, gestational ages of the babies, and whether family planning methods were used; and
- HB 1339, which would remove protection from malpractice damages assessed to persons, hospitals or abortion facilities when injuries are caused by abortion.
As of March 14, HB 1831 was still in the House’s Health Care Policy Committee. SB 1058 has been approved by the Senate’s Judiciary and Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence Committee and was awaiting a vote by the full Senate.
This article is reprinted from the March 25, 2008, issue of The Pathway, the newspaper of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
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