2009 General Assembly Ends with No Anti-Choice Legislation
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Pamela Sumners, Esq. 314.531.8616
NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri celebrated the end of the 2009 legislative session by marking the defeat of all bills it classified as anti-abortion and anti-birth control in the Missouri General Assembly. The group was particularly pleased with the demise of House Bill 46, the “coerced abortions” bill that had been the focal point of its lobbying efforts, which failed after the House refused to accept a compromise Senate version of the bill that stripped the provisions pro-choice advocates had denounced as unacceptable and unconstitutional. “We held the line on the ‘coerced abortions’ bill that would have forced some pregnant women who had been assaulted, stalked, or even poisoned to become unwilling mothers,” said NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri executive director Pamela Sumners. Sumners cited two senators as critical to the defeat of H.B. 46, Senator Joan Bray of University City and Senator Jolie Justus of Kansas City. Senators Bray and Justus worked in bipartisan negotiations with anti-choice senators to draft a substitute bill that would be constitutional and that would not have serious impact on the health and safety of women seeking abortion care in Missouri. “We could not have held back the tide without the efforts of all our pro-choice senators, but especially Senators Bray and Justus. Our many telephones calls, letters and emails as well as our daily presence in the Capitol would have been wasted without their judgment, their willingness to be reasonable, and their sheer energy invested in midnight-oil meetings to present the House with a bill it could easily have passed that the courts would not have struck,” said Sumners. “Instead, the House showed how ideologically extreme it is by cutting off its nose to spite its face and jeering at a reasonable compromise arrived at by pro-choice and anti-choice people in the Senate,” she said. NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri is the largest statewide grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to protecting the full range of women’s reproductive health options. #### CONTACT: Pamela L. Sumners, Esq., Executive Director 314.531.8616/312.213.1725 (cell)
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