MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
JEFFERSON CITY - A new approach in the quest for a ban on partial-birth abortions has anti-abortion lawmakers are expressing more confidence about their chances.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Ted House, D-St. Charles, creates the crime of "infanticide" and includes partial-birth abortion in the definition. "What we want to do is prohibit the killing of children while they're being born, so this is an approach that describes that as infanticide," House said.
The new approach has attracted the support of Sen. Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau -- the sponsor of the more traditional approach to a ban on "partial birth" abortions.
"Court cases in other states have led us to believe that this is the approach that can pass constitutional muster," Kinder said of the new "infanticide" approach.
House agreed, saying that the infanticide approach has never been overthrown by a court.
However, like the older language, this latest approach does not include an exemption for cases involving the mother's health -- a key concern of the governor.
The absence of a health exemption was cited by Gov. Mel Carnahan's as the reason for his veto of the partial-birth abortion ban in 1997.
The governor's spokesman, Chris Sifford, repeated that the governor remains willing to support a restriction on partial-birth abortions if it includes the health exemption.
But that offer remains rejected by anti-abortion legislators -- regardless whether the procedure is called "partial-birth" or "infanticide."
"The problem with that is the U.S. Supreme Court has defined health so broadly that it renders any prohibition meaningless," House said.