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Schupp, Senate Dems looking to block House changes to abortion bill

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Senate Democrats will look to filibuster this extraordinary session’s legislation on abortion which returns to the upper chamber after the House made some significant changes to the legislation Monday and Tuesday.

Sen. Jill Schupp, one of the Senate’s leading abortion-access proponents, told The Missouri Times that either the bill would be blocked by the superminority caucus or they would look send the bill to conference.

“We are not going to be able to just stand by and let this happen,” she said. “I’m going to object strongly to this, and we’ll see if there’s a way through conference… to take care of this, we’ll take care of it there.”

House passes altered version of Senate abortion bill

Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, said her concerns with the bill revolved around three major changes the house made to the legislation. The new bill added back in the new crime of interference of medical assistance, which could see abortion clinic employees charged with a Class A misdemeanor should they actively prevent service from an emergency health care provider for a patient. It also requires a complication plan be submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services by the abortion provider and approved by the body for certain abortifacient drugs.

Finally, the physician performing the procedure, or the referring physician, must hold a conference with the patient to discuss their options and possible complications with the procedure. Missouri law already requires that conference take place 72 days before the abortion occurs, the longest amount of time between consultation and the procedure in the United States (shared with five other states).

However, Schupp added that changes to the fetal tissue reporting section of the bill troubled her most. The House changed the amount of tissue sample sent to a pathologist (within five days) changed to the entirety of the sample instead of the current standard of a representative sample. The new bill also requires a histopathological exam by the pathologist, which Schupp says is not only expensive but potentially medically unethical.

“SB 5, as it came out of the Senate, was bad enough, and this just makes a bad bill even worse,” Schupp said.

The Senate deliberated amongst themselves for nearly 10 hours off the floor last week to reach a compromise on the controversial legislation. Sen. Andrew Koenig, the carrier of the bill, said the morning after his bill passed out of the Senate that his bill was specifically formulated to prevent a filibuster.

“When you’re dealing with 33 independent kingdoms in the Senate when you’re negotiating, it can be difficult because you can get two people to agree to something and then you have to take it to other people or you can get other language that’s proposed but you have to look at it deeply to know what it does,” Koenig, R-Manchester, said.

It remains to be seen exactly what action the full Senate will take on the measure. The upper chamber reconvenes Thursday morning for a technical session.