The attorney general said the state may enforce abortion rules in cases where parents have not consented to a minor obtaining an abortion.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said the state may still enforce certain abortion laws after a voter-approved amendment repealing the state’s abortion law is certified.
On Nov. 5, Missouri residents
voted to overturn the state’s near-total abortion ban, seeking to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Amendment 3 was passed with 52 percent of the vote.
In a Nov. 22 opinion
order addressed to Governor-elect Mike Kehoe, Bailey said the passage of Amendment 3 will render the state’s abortion statutes “unenforceable,” except under certain circumstances.
Bailey said that his office will enforce an abortion ban after fetal viability, citing the amendment’s language allowing the regulation of abortion after fetal viability except in cases where the procedure is deemed necessary to protect the mother’s life or physical or mental health.
“First, under the express terms of the amendment, the government may still protect innocent life after viability. The statutes thus remain generally enforceable after viability,” he stated in a three-page order.
Bailey said the state may enforce abortion rules in cases where parents have not consented to a minor obtaining an abortion and when a woman or minor is unlawfully pressured into undergoing the procedure.
“Parents’ fundamental rights include the ‘right to refuse’ a procedure, but courts have never ‘transmuted’ this right to refuse into a right to obtain a procedure. ... Nothing in Amendment 3 does either,” he stated.
The order also stated that “should Amendment 3 be construed more narrowly by courts or be amended or repealed in the future to permit greater protection of unborn life, that will automatically restore authority to the Attorney General and other officials to resume broader enforcement.”
The term “viability” is used by medical providers to determine whether a pregnancy is expected to continue developing normally and whether a fetus has the potential to survive outside of the uterus,
according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Fetal viability is generally considered between 20 and 25 weeks of gestation, though there is no definite time frame for viability.
Bailey is one of the defendants named in a
lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood on Nov. 6, which sought to block a number of state laws that targeted abortion providers, including a rule requiring facilities that perform abortions to be licensed as a type of ambulatory surgical center.
The lawsuit, filed by the Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers-Missouri, stems from the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court
decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, which returned the power to legislate abortion to the states.
Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report.
