New Missouri Ban on Abortion Procedure Is Blocked

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri’s new law banning a type of late-term abortion was put on hold Friday by a federal judge after opponents went to court to block what they called a direct attack on the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

Abortion rights activists say the law, enacted Thursday when Gov. Mel Carnahan’s veto was overridden, was written in such a way that it also criminalized more common abortion procedures.

Planned Parenthood, the state’s largest abortion provider, filed suit and sought the temporary stay granted Friday. The order lasts until Sept. 27, when U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright is expected to consider whether the law is constitutional.

Before Friday’s ruling, Planned Parenthood had suspended abortions at its clinic in St. Louis. The clinic in the Kansas City area that performs abortions is in the suburb of Overland Park, Kan., and is not affected by the law.

Bans on the procedure, which is sometimes called “partial-birth” abortion, have been blocked or severely limited in 19 of the 20 states where they have been challenged, the New York-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy said. Abortion providers have appealed a federal judge’s decision upholding a ban in Wisconsin.

Backers of the Missouri law said its approach is different from an outright ban because it creates a specific felony called “infanticide.”

“We draw the line at infanticide,” said state Sen. Ted House, the bill’s Senate sponsor. “This statute has never been ruled on.”

The law subjects anyone who causes “the death of a living infant . . . by an overt act performed when the infant is partially born or born” to charges equivalent to murder.

In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood said the law is “so broadly and vaguely worded as to put plaintiffs at risk of criminal prosecution for virtually any abortion they perform, regardless of the stage of pregnancy.”

“I am not disappointed that the courts will review it,” said state Rep. Bill Luetkenhaus, a Democrat who sponsored the bill. “In time, whether it’s a federal court, a court of appeals, or ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court, their review will give the bill the validity we have said it has had all along.”

But Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement that Missouri “has outlawed virtually all abortion procedures.”

She called the law a “direct attack” on the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide.

Carnahan, the Democratic governor, has said the measure could be interpreted as a legal defense for violence against abortion providers and could end up outlawing more procedures than the one targeted.