2 weeks Ago By By Jack Suntrup St. Louis Post-Dispatch
JEFFERSON CITY — A ballot question to repeal Missouri’s new right to abortion won final approval Thursday in the Missouri House — but with a notable thumbs-down from the chamber’s Republican leader. House Speaker Jonathan Patterson, R-Lee’s Summit, said after the 103-51 vote that he didn’t think his constituents back home would support the measure. He was the only Republican to vote against the resolution Thursday.
The Republican response to last year’s Amendment 3 now moves to the Senate for consideration with four weeks left in the legislative session. “The ‘no’ vote for me was very easy,” Patterson said afterward. “I think we all come here and we’re all sent to represent our districts, our 38,000 people that we represent.
” The Republican said he wasn’t reconsidering his speakership after the vote. “This makes me actually very happy that I’m the speaker of this — the Republican conference, because we allow people to not always go with where everybody else is,” Patterson said. Patterson, before the Nov.
5 election in which voters enacted Amendment 3, said legislators should respect the will of the people “and we will.” After the election, Patterson endorsed work on a response to Amendment 3 amid a challenge for speaker from state Rep. Justin Sparks, R-Wildwood, who had criticized Patterson as too moderate.
The ballot question approved Thursday would allow abortion in cases of fetal anomaly and in medical emergencies, as well as in rape or incest cases up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. It doesn’t explicitly ban all other abortions, but repealing Amendment 3 would clear the way for additional restrictions. Amendment 3, approved by 51.
6% of the voters, created the constitutional right to abortion up to the point of fetal viability and allows abortion after that in certain situations. Despite voting against it, Patterson defended the GOP approach: “Taking something to the voters another time isn’t really subverting the will of the voters.” “We accept it as the law of the land.
We accept it as the will of the people. Right now, we’re just taking the democratic process,” he said. “The people that disagree with Amendment 3 also have the opportunity to have their voices heard,” Patterson said.
House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, D-Kansas City, said people worked for months “tirelessly gathering twice as many signatures as we needed to” get Amendment 3 on the ballot, and noted that it passed in a majority of House districts. Democrats also slammed as deceptive the proposed ballot language voters would see, which doesn’t say that the question would repeal Amendment 3. Currently Missouri courts can rewrite lawmaker-written ballot language that is judged to be unfair and insufficient in violation of state law.
But, earlier this week, House Republicans sent to Gov. Mike Kehoe a bill that would limit the courts’ ability to rewrite ballot language that a judge had determined violated state law. “This is not democracy in action.
This is authoritarianism in action,” Aune said. Asked about the speaker’s “no” vote, the Democratic leader called Patterson, a surgeon, a “qualified medical professional who understands this issue probably better than most people in his caucus.” She said she wished that Patterson “was able to convince the zealots and the folks who are afraid of the grassroots to be a little bit braver today.
” Patterson said “a number of statutory things” would have to happen after passage of the new abortion ballot question. As an example, he cited the term “fetal anomaly” that is used in the bill. Fetal anomaly is defined in the bill as “a structural or functional abnormality in the unborn child’s gestational development that would make life outside the womb impossible.
” Rep. Raychel Proudie, D-Ferguson, previously said the language wouldn’t allow for an exception in the case of anencephaly, a condition severely affecting skull and brain development where the child is expected to survive for only a short time after birth. Patterson said fetal anomaly is “kind of defined in there, but when you’re talking about fetal anomalies, I would rather call it a devastating fetal condition.
“You’re talking any number of developmental abnormalities that really lead to severe defects in the child that they wouldn’t survive outside the womb,” Patterson said. “If you look at a state like Louisiana, they have those enumerated,” Patterson said. “I think you would see something along those lines.
He raised concern about the 12-week time limit for abortion that was included in rape cases. He said if a rape victim finds out they’re pregnant at seven weeks, they would need to first deal with that trauma and then decide whether to proceed with the pregnancy. Other hurdles such as getting in for a doctor’s appointment and taking off work for the procedure would remain, Patterson said.
“We have said that — that if you’ve been raped, an abortion, we can accept that,” Patterson said. “I think a debate that we should have and I hope happens in the Senate is — is 12 weeks long enough?” The legislation is House Joint Resolution 73 ..
