Missouri Senate passes bill to ban abortions at 8 weeks
Source: LA Times
Missouri's Republican-led Senate passed a bill to ban abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy.
Senators approved the legislation 24-10 early Thursday with just hours left before lawmakers' Friday deadline to pass bills. It needs at least another vote of approval in the GOP-led House before it can go to Republican Gov. Mike Parson, who supports it.
The Missouri proposal includes exceptions for medical emergencies, but not for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. Doctors would face five to 15 years in prison for violating the eight-week cutoff. Women who receive abortions at eight weeks or later into a pregnancy wouldn't be prosecuted.
Senate Democrats launched into an attack on the bill before Republican supporters had a chance to bring it up for debate on the Senate floor. Lawmakers had faced a Friday deadline to pass legislation.
"So much of this bill is just shaming women into some kind of complacency that says we are vessels of pregnancy rather than understanding that women's lives all hold different stories," St. Louis-area Democratic Sen. Jill Schupp told colleagues. "We cannot paint with a broad brush and interfere by putting a law forward that tells them what they can and cannot do."
Read more: https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-missouri-senate-abortion-bill-20190516-story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
