A federal appeals court has upheld today the temporary blocking of Missouri’s eight-week abortion ban.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis issued the ruling about the regulations passed by the Missouri Legislature in 2019 for abortions around eight weeks of pregnancy. Under House Bill 126, sponsored by O’Fallon Republican State Representative Nick Schroer, medical emergencies are exceptions but not rape or incest. Abortion doctors will face five to 15 years in prison if they violate the policies.
The measure would ban doctors from doing abortions if the baby would have Down syndrome and for sex or race-selective abortions. Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood, Missouri’s lone abortion clinic, filed a lawsuit in 2019 challenging the law.
