Missouri passes antiabortion law

Senator Ted House speaks in Jefferson City, Missouri, in support of a bill which would classify some types of abortion as murder

The Missouri state legislature has passed a far reaching antiabortion law, which abortion rights campaigners claim is the most restrictive in the past 25 years. The Infant's Protection Act was passed last month, despite the opposition and attempted veto of Missouri's Democratic governor, Mel Carnahan.

The new law, sponsored by right to life legislators, defines as infanticide any act causing the death of a fetus when it is outside or partly outside the womb, and makes that act a felony.

It makes illegal what is known in the United States as partial birth abortion, which is second or third trimester abortion carried out by dilatation and extraction. In this procedure the pregnant woman's cervix is dilated over two or three days, and after the fetus partially emerges it is killed when a suction tube is inserted into its skull and the skull is collapsed.

Thirty states have banned partial-birth abortion, and in 18 of them federal courts have blocked the laws with permanent injunctions or temporary restraining orders.

The new Missouri law goes further than other laws, however. "If it had applied to only partial birth abortion, and provided an exception for protecting the health of the mother, I would have signed it. But it was written to reach back with subtlety of language to the fifth and sixth week of pregnancy," said Mr Carnahan.

Democratic senator Ted House, one of the bill's sponsors, said: "The issue in this bill is where the murder takes place. If it's inside the uterus it's abortion and it's legal. If outside, it's infanticide."

A lawyer for abortion rights groups, Janet Benshoof of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, called the law "the worst law passed in this country since [the] Roe versus Wade [judgment]." That judgment, handed down in 1973, made abortion legal in the United States.

She and other opponents said they found most objectionable its additional provisions that could apply to procedures through the abdomen, as in the removal of a cancerous uterus with a live fetus inside.

Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said: "This law is so broad and so vague it bans virtually all abortion procedures. Unlike similar bans passed by other state legislatures, the Missouri law goes far beyond just banning abortion. For example, this law criminalises women who undergo an abortion procedure, carrying a sentence of up to life in prison."

She claimed that the intent of the law was to overturn the Roe versus Wade judgment. "The core principle of Roe is that throughout pregnancy, the life and health of the pregnant woman are paramount. The Missouri law does not provide an exception protecting the health of the woman, making her health subservient to the potential life of the fetus."

The Planned Parenthood organisation, the leading abortion provider in Missouri, took the issue to the federal court. Judge Scott Wright of the federal district court for the western district of Missouri immediately issued a temporary restraining order against the new law, pending a hearing on its constitutionality.

Fred Charatan, Florida


studentBMJ 1999;07:394-436 November ISSN 0966-6494