We support the following legislation, which has been filed and needs to move forward as soon as possible to help bring equal protection to preborn children in Missouri.

 

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SB 775 - This act establishes the "Abolition of Abortion in Missouri Act."

 

This act ensures that it is the intent of the General Assembly to acknowledge the sanctity of innocent human life and the unborn child at every stage of development has all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state pursuant to the Missouri Constitution.

 

This act also provides that any person accused of committing any criminal offense against a person under the laws of this state where the victim is an unborn child shall be prosecuted in a venue as provided in the act.

 

The affirmative defense of duress for the offense of murder shall be available where the victim is an unborn child and the defendant is the child's mother. This act also provides it shall be a justifiable defense if a medical procedure is performed by a licensed physician on a pregnant female to avert the death of the female which the results in the accidental or unintentional death of the unborn child and all reasonable alternatives to save the life of the unborn child were unavailable or were unsuccessful.

 

Finally, this act adds the definition of person in the criminal code to include a human being, including an unborn child at every stage of development from the moment of fertilization until birth.

 

This act contains a referendum clause.

This act is identical to SB 356 (2023).

The full text, status and updates to SB 775 can be found here.

SJR 74 - Initiative Petition Reform

 

SJR 74 contains essential components to address the failures of our current Initiative Petition (IP) process, currently threatening to enshrine abortion into our constitution as a fundamental right through 9 months of pregnancy:

 

  • It amends Article XII (not Article III).
  • It uses Concurrent Majority Ratification
  • It applies to ALL proposed constitutional amendments, whether proposed by petition, the legislature, or a constitutional convention.
  • It uses state House districts as the second metric or condition for adopting an amendment.

 

The committee added some additional restrictions on foreign involvement in the amendment process.

 

Concurrent Majority Ratification (CMR) is intended to give voice to rural Missourians. Currently the urban areas can change the Constitution with little help from the rural areas. CMR require a broader geographic consensus because in addition to the current statewide popular simple majority vote requirement, a proposed amendment must ALSO receive a majority vote of the people in each of more than half of the state's 163 House districts.

 

Full text, status and updates to SJR 74 can be found here.

Please contact your legislators to encourage them to support this bill and move it forward asap!