3 days Ago By By Jack Suntrup St. Louis Post-Dispatch
JEFFERSON CITY — The campaign for Amendment 3 said Monday more than 500 Missouri doctors have endorsed the Nov. 5 proposal to end the state’s abortion ban. The plan would create the right to reproductive freedom and reverse the state’s current law, which only allows abortions in medical emergencies.
In a video news conference, Dr. Jennifer Smith , a St. Louis-based obstetrician and gynecologist, told reporters that doctors have received no clarity since the law took effect in June 2022 on what constitutes a “medical emergency.
” “I don’t think that many hospitals feel comfortable testing this law,” Smith said. Doctors who perform an illegal abortion in Missouri could face a class B felony, which can result in a prison sentence of between five and 15 years. They also could lose their medical license.
“People are afraid to challenge it because even if you would win, your life is completely turned upside-down just in being charged.” She said patients with “life-threatening complications are scared” and that patients have delayed care or traveled out of Missouri “to get the care that they need.” State abortion law defines a medical emergency as a condition which “based on reasonable medical judgment” is so serious that “the immediate abortion of her pregnancy to avert the death” is necessary, or for which “a delay will create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.
” Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said two Missouri hospitals ran afoul of the federal law after refusing an emergency abortion in August 2022 to Mylissa Farmer.
Doctors at both hospitals told the 41-year-old Missouri woman that her baby had no chance of surviving after her water broke at 17 weeks but because of the states’ abortion bans, her condition needed to worsen before they’d terminate her pregnancy. Farmer was featured in a campaign ad by Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine in her losing campaign for the U.S.
Senate in 2022. In addition to 500 doctors, 300 other medical professionals also signed onto the letter, according to the campaign. The Missourians for Constitutional Freedom campaign did not name the employers of the health care providers who signed the letter.
The campaign said speakers at a virtual news conference Monday were speaking on behalf of themselves and their personal experiences. Smith is an OB-GYN for Consultants in Women’s Health Care Inc., part of Washington University Clinical Associates.
Dr. Betsy Wickstrom, a Kansas City-based obstetrician and gynecologist, said people considering Missouri for OB-GYN residencies are asking “a lot of questions before they decide to come here. “What is concerning to them is, ‘do I even get to learn the techniques that I would need to help someone who has an incomplete miscarriage, who is bleeding?’” she said.
Wickstrom said cancer patients are being advised to wait until after their pregnancy to receive life-saving care. “Why are we making people choose between their own lives and continuing a pregnancy in a forced-birth situation?” she asked. The Missouri Supreme Court last week ordered Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft to place Amendment 3 on the ballot after a last-minute lawsuit threatened to derail the campaign.
A spokesperson for the Missouri Stands With Women campaign, which opposes Amendment 3, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. The Associated Press contributed to this report..
