Missouri asks Supreme Court to review ban on abortions after 8 weeks
After defeats in lower federal courts, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state’s restrictive 2019 abortion law, a near-total ban on the procedure.
The law prohibits abortion after 8 weeks of pregnancy and includes a series of triggers that ban abortion at 14, 18 and 20 weeks if the 8-week ban is overturned. And it prohibits abortions for the reason of a fetus’s race, sex or solely for the diagnosis of Down syndrome or other conditions that might be fatal. There is no exception for victims of rape or incest.
It has been temporarily blocked from going into effect by a federal district court since August 2019, after a lawsuit brought by Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, which operates Missouri’s sole abortion clinic. Last month a panel of judges on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to hear the case of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban that could determine the future of Missouri’s law. The court’s decision, expected next year, will have implications for all state laws that restrict abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb.
Schmitt, who is running for U.S. Senate, makes a similar petition to the Supreme Court. It is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a right to abortion.
The petition asks the Supreme Court to review both the 8-week abortion ban and the “reason ban” on abortions sought due to diagnoses of Down Syndrome or other conditions.
In a statement announcing the appeal, Schmitt focused the “reason ban.” He has a son who is is on the autism spectrum and has other special needs, according to his campaign website.
“My son Stephen has shown me the inherent beauty in life, and he brings immense joy and love to his loved ones and those around him,” Schmitt said. “A pre-natal diagnosis of Down syndrome should not be a death sentence.”
Proponents of reason bans have argued seeking an abortion on the grounds of a Down Syndrome diagnosis is a form of eugenics, and the issue has gained political traction around the country in recent years.
Planned Parenthood had argued the law presented an “unjustifiable risk,” in which physicians could be prosecuted for performing an abortion for any reason if the patient was aware of the fetus’s sex, race or medical diagnosis.
Federal appeals courts have diverged on the issue. The full Eighth Circuit in January blocked a similar law in Arkansas, which has already made a petition to the high court. In April, the full Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Ohio’s ban on abortions after a fetal Down Syndrome diagnosis to go into effect.
