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Pro-Choice Groups Fight Missouri Ballot Proposal
A St. Louis woman and several Missouri pro-choice groups yesterday filed a court challenge to a proposed 2008 ballot measure that they say could virtually outlaw abortion in the state.

"We are going to do everything we can to stop this terrible and extreme and dangerous measure from going forward," said Paula Gianino, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region.

"As a mother, wife and teacher, I am very concerned about the impact this initiative would have on Missouri families," said Mary Hickey, whose legal action in Cole County Circuit Court was supported by several Planned Parenthood affiliates and the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

Read the entire article from the Washington Times

Missouri - The Most Restrictive Law in the Country
The Baltimore Sun examined a proposed Missouri ballot initiative that would require doctors to certify that performing an abortion was necessary to avoid a woman's death or prevent a "serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman."

If the initiative is placed on the November 2008 ballot and is approved by voters, Missouri would have "possibly the most restrictive abortion law in the country," the Sun reports.

Read the entire article in the Baltimore Sun.

Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Planned Parenthood Stand Behind Challenge to Abortion Initiative Petition

Jefferson City, MO, December 17, 2007 – Today, Planned Parenthood affiliates in Missouri (PPMO) and the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (MORCRC) applauded the legal challenge, filed by Mary Hickey of St. Louis, to the abortion ban initiative petition that was certified on December 7. The initiative petition was proposed by the Elliot Institute, an anti-abortion group from Illinois, and would ban abortion unless the doctor certifies in writing it is needed to prevent imminent death or other severe medical risks.

“We are fighting against the ban because it is extreme, dangerous, and clearly unconstitutional,” stated Paula Gianino, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, “but we would much rather spend our time, energy, and resources doing what we do best – providing health care to the women and men of Missouri and reducing unintended pregnancy through our family planning and comprehensive sex education programs.”

“As a mother, wife, and teacher, I am very concerned about the impact this initiative would have on Missouri families,” said Mary Hickey.

Besides banning abortion, the proposed initiative would allow the government to interfere with the private health care decisions made between a woman and her doctor and invites lawsuits against doctors, family members and others who help a woman get abortion care.

“This is another immoral attempt to hurt women and deny them access to the professional health care they deserve,” stated the Reverend Rebecca Turner, Executive Director of Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. “Faithful people in Missouri cannot stand by and allow this attack on women.”

“Abortion bans harm women and do nothing to get to the root of the problem - unintended pregnancy. If the Elliot Institute, and Governor Blunt, truly wanted to reduce abortions in Missouri then they would join with Planned Parenthood and focus on preventing unintended pregnancies instead of proposing a ban on abortion,” said Tonia Stubblefield, CEO of Tri-Rivers Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood and the Missouri Religious Coalition will do everything we can to protect access to safe and legal abortion care in Missouri. “We have always been here for women” said Peter Brownlie, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, “and we will continue to fight for access to the full range of reproductive health services.”

For the summary language and full text of the initiative go to http://www.sos.mo.gov/elections/2008petitions/08init_pet.asp#2008017

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Missouri Governor Appoints Fully Stacked Task Force on Abortion

Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri has appointed a “Governor’s Task Force on the Impact of Abortion on Women” to make recommendations to him on policies and actions regarding abortion. Like the governor, all 14 members of the taxpayer-funded group oppose legal abortion. Even before the task force convened, the governor described his expectations at a press conference: “I certainly would begin with the presumption that abortion has a negative impact on Missouri children, Missouri women, Missouri men, because it’s harmful to society,” he said.

The governor’s action combines two strategies of the movement to end legal abortion: 1) using government powers to release slanted reports on abortion, and 2) pressuring for laws to restrict or criminalize abortion based on unsubstantiated claims by Medical Right groups that are outside the mainstream of recognized and accepted medical fact and practice.

The process of a stacked task force was also used in South Dakota to rationalize a near-total ban on abortion. The ban, passed by the legislature and signed by the governor in 2006, was ultimately rejected by voters on a state ballot measure.

Now Missouri may be facing a similar test. Less than a month after the task force convened, a ballot proposal with a near-total ban on abortion was filed with the Secretary of State, said Reverend Rebecca Turner, executive director of the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. The Elliot Institute, the Medical Right group headed by activist David Reardon, is seeking to put the proposal on Missouri's 2008 election ballot. The Elliot Institute, which filed the proposal Nov. 6, would have to collect at least 90,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot in November 2008. If the required signatures are certified by the Secretary of State, the measure will go to voters.

The Missouri task force arose in a secretive manner and took women’s health advocates by surprise, said Reverend Turner. “The governor is in the pocket of right-to-life. This is their latest strategy,” she said.

According to the governor’s office, the Missouri task force will seek “to understand and highlight the impact of abortion on women physiologically, psychologically and socially.” This exercise has been attempted by legal abortion opponents many times before, without success. The overwhelming scientific evidence continues to show that abortion does not harm women — physically or mentally. In the late 1980s, President Reagan asked his like-minded surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, to conduct a study on the mental pain caused by abortion. To everyone's surprise, Koop determined that psychological problems were "minuscule from a public health perspective." The American Psychological Association followed up by asking a group of six experts to undertake a special review. The panel concluded in 1989 that terminating an unwanted pregnancy posed no hazard to women's mental health. The predominant sensation women felt following an abortion was relief, the group said.

In 2004, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), an abortion opponent, called hearings on the impact of abortion on women, with the goal of securing federally-funded studies about the alleged harms of abortion. Dr. Nada Stotland, Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Rush Medical College in Chicago, testified that “the data from the most rigorous, objective studies are clear. Abortions are not a significant cause of mental illness….Unfortunately, there are active and somewhat successful attempts to convince state and national legislatures, members of the judiciary, the public, and women considering abortion of the negative psychiatric and physical consequences for which there is no good evidence.”

The 14 members of the Missouri task force include top officers of three anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers, Missouri Nurses for Life, the Alliance for Life, Blacks for Life, Missouri Right to Life, Missouri Family Network, and two leaders of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Missouri, an anti-abortion organization that opposes embryonic stem-cell research, also an issue in the state. John McCastle, a task force member and president of Alliance for Life-Missouri, said one issue that will be studied is whether abortion causes crime. He said unnamed studies suggest a majority of women prisoners have had abortions.

In failing to include even a token nod to views that do not conform with the governor’s, the Missouri task force goes one-up on the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, a 15-member panel stacked with 9 representatives opposing legal abortion, including a lawyer with a local Catholic diocese and the founder of the local right-to-life organization. The final report concluded that a ban on abortion was necessary to protect the “rights, interests, and health of the mother and the life of her unborn child.” Even the chair of the task force, Dr. Marty Allison, who identified herself as pro-life, said the report was “subjective and biased” and “included false information not reflective, in my opinion, of the testimony we heard.” The four members who opposed a ban were refused the right to issue a minority report and walked out. The report was then used to justify the legislature’s passage of the ban on abortion.

The new ballot measure proposed in Missouri, entitled “Prevention of Coerced and Unsafe Abortion Act,” would seemingly ban all abortions unless a doctor certified that an abortion is needed to prevent imminent death. In that case, the abortion must be delayed while a woman undergoes “psychological, emotional, demographic and situational” evaluations. Doctors would be prohibited from referring patients for abortions to states with differing laws. If a doctor failed to complete these requirements, a woman who had an abortion could sue the doctor and receive up to $10,000 for each risk the doctor failed to include in the determination that she should have the abortion. The woman also could sue for wrongful death of the fetus and could file suit up to two years "after the date the woman has recovered from any psychological complications" from the abortion, the proposal says.

In November, Janet Crepps, a staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, spoke at the American Public Health Association, about the increasing manipulation of scientific evidence and claims of harms to women’s health in efforts to prohibit abortion. Crepps noted in an abstract that state legislatures are considering bans on abortion based on claims that abortion leads to a series of harms, such as suicide, depression and breast cancer. “These claims are based on little or no scientific evidence: the conclusions of well-performed studies are inaccurately reported; studies with serious methodological flaws are touted as definitive, and some claims are made with no supporting evidence,” noted the abstract.

Cynthia L. Cooper
December 3, 2007