JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – By an overwhelming vote of 110-38, the Missouri House voted to approve Sen. Andrew Koenig’s SB 5, instituting several new abortion regulations in the state.
“We came in with two important missions: One, to try to put a set of reasonable regulations in place to protect the health and safety of women and also to make sure our pregnancy resource centers in this state are protected and that they continue to have the ability to enjoy their sincerely-held religious beliefs,” House Speaker Todd Richardson said after the day’s session concluded.
Rep. Diane Franklin, R-Camdenton, carried the bill in the House with assists from Rep. Jay Barnes and Rep. Kathy Swan. In doing so, however, the House effectively decided to continue the second special session called by Gov. Eric Greitens as the heavily amended bill will now return to the Senate.
The Senate can either reject the changes and grant a conference with the house, which may be a possibility if Senate Democrats filibuster the new language inserted into the bill by House Republicans.
The Senate worked for over nine hours last week before convening on the floor to reach a point where Democrats would stand down. The highly compromised version of the bill irked just about everyone in the chamber,
“I certainly think there are definitely people that think it’s a little bit too weak,” Koenig said last week.
Franklin said the bill needed increased regulations, and the resulting bill looks a great deal like Sen. Bob Onder’s original language in SB 1.
“The bill we received from the Senate we thought was a good framework, but it did not really specifically meet the governor’s call,” Franklin said. “Whether you agree with abortion or not, providing quality health care is the utmost importance to us, if you choose to have an abortion.”
Long day (and night) in Senate leads to compromise on abortion bills
The bill added back in several provisions taken out by the Senate, including a provision that creates the crime of interference with medical assistance. That language would punish any employee of an abortion facility should they prevent medical personnel from normal standards of care for women undergoing an abortion but experiencing complications.
The House also added provisions back into the bill that would require the Department of Health and Senior Services to approve a complication plan from an abortion provider for any abortion drug that has more than a 1 percent risk of complications, like hemorrhaging. It would also change the state’s consent laws regarding abortion. Only the physician performing the procedure or the referring physician will be able to have a conference regarding the woman’s options or discuss complications under the new bill.
Barnes, one of the key architects of the final House language, read off a list of current abortion regulations that he believes were more than reasonable for a surgical facility, like having a physician on the premises in the event of an emergency.
“It’s easy to talk about things in the abstract and object,” he said of the Democrats opposed to the new legislation. “It’s hard for anyone to reasonably object to any of those standards.”
For Alison Dreith, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, some of those rules can be considered targeted regulation of abortion provider, or TRAP, laws. She believes all of the regulations tacked onto SB 5 Tuesday fall under that category.
“I’m disappointed in today, but not surprised at all,” she said. “We knew this was going to happen, but the biggest letdown is the one for Missouri taxpayers.”
The Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstadt Supreme Court case dealt with two specific Texas laws that the court determined were intended to limit access to abortion in that state. The two laws, one which held abortion facilities to the same requirements of ambulatory surgical centers and another which required the abortion provider have admitting privileges to a nearby hospital, were also in Missouri statute, and were struck down by a Missouri federal judge in accordance with Hellerstadt.
Yet, Barnes has consistently pointed out that the Hellerstadt decision still furthered the state’s interest in protecting fetuses in the womb, which has been the major holding of Roe v. Wade and countless other Supreme Court cases regarding abortion.
“Hellerstadt did not say states can no longer enact regulations meant to protect women’s health,” he said last week. “In fact, it went out of its way to say in the first page of the opinion to say Texas law change in this way, this is the way the old law was. One way to read that is to say states are free to do what the old law was.”
The bill also retains its new fetal tissue reporting requirements, a one-of-a-kind statute giving the attorney general original and concurrent jurisdiction to enforce the state’s abortion laws, and a measure that will void a St. Louis ordinance that anti-abortion advocates say makes St. Louis an “abortion sanctuary city.” While the ordinance adds reproductive health decisions to its list of protections under the city’s non-discrimination laws, opponents believe it could force alternatives-to-abortion facilities to hire women who are not anti-abortion and accuse the language of infringing on their religious beliefs.
The House adjourned until June 30, but the Senate will meet Thursday for a session that will likely see some deliberation on the newest iteration of this bill.
Reactions to legislation
Reactions to the legislation also continue to come in as this is a developing story. Those will be added here as they are secured.
M’Evie Mead, Missouri Director of Policy and Organizing:
“In addition to rolling back local nondiscrimination protections, Senate Bill 5 imposes additional, medically unnecessary restrictions on abortion providers The U.S. Supreme Court was clear and concise in its Whole Woman’s Health decision nearly a year ago: any medically unnecessary restrictions on safe, legal abortion, like those in Senate Bill 5, are unconstitutional. It’s time for Missouri lawmakers to stop following Gov. Eric Greitens’ lead, spending $20,000 a day on political games. The money spent on just one day of the special session could have provided well-woman exams to 100 Missourians. If the governor is interested in improving women’s health, he should prioritize increasing access to health care over paying politicians to pass medically unnecessary laws.”
Organizations are free to send their comments to pressreleases@themissouritimes.com
