Promise of special session on abortion sounds hopeful note
By Allen Palmeri
Staff Writer
May 17, 2005
JEFFERSON CITY – The dramatic failure of pro-life legislation on the last day of the 2005 General Assembly has created a window of opportunity from May through September for pro-life Missourians to communicate with Gov. Matt Blunt, who has called a special session of the Legislature for pro-life bills in conjunction with the scheduled veto session.
Blunt, who listens to the pro-life teaching of Pastor John Marshall at Second Baptist Church, Springfield, was troubled May 13 when the 93rd General Assembly failed to hand him a pro-life bill. The governor responded by immediately calling for the special session and urging lawmakers by way of a news release to produce “legislation that will reduce the number of abortions and protect innocent life.”
The governor noted that he is “profoundly disappointed” in the leaders of Missouri Right to Life for their “tragic and bizarre” tactics to work against the passage of both Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 100 in the last days of the session. Blunt reiterated that he is pro-life and that he wants to sign a pro-life bill this year. Therefore, the governor is calling on all Missourians to overcome “political game playing” so that more unborn babies can be saved. This is where the window of opportunity comes in, according to Kerry Messer, lobbyist, Missouri Baptist Convention Christian Life Commission and founder, Missouri Family Network.
Messer is a 21-year lobbyist in the Capitol who has built a reputation as a diplomat. He and two other veteran pro-life lobbyists in Missouri, Larry Weber of the Missouri Catholic Conference and Sam Lee of Campaign Life Missouri, have enjoyed blending their talents this year. All three are friends who continue to talk through their differences on wide-ranging areas of public policy. Missouri Right to Life is a friend to these friends, Messer said, even if the three friends sometimes struggle to love the one.
“The various pro-life groups are all different parts of the same body of Christ,” Messer said. “God calls some people and some organizations to be the leg, some to be the arm, some to be the mouth, some to be the ears. In this case, I believe God has called some to be the ‘Bad Cops.’ Others God has allowed to be the ‘Good Cops.’ The last thing that we need to do is to criticize each other for not being our part of the body.”
Messer became a bit of a “Good Cop” in the current pro-life debate when he testified in a House committee neither for nor against a trimmed-down version of Senate Bill 2, sponsored by Sen. John Loudon, R-Ballwin, that the governor wanted to sign in tandem with House Bill 100, sponsored by Rep. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield. Messer has always liked the comprehensive pro-life bill passed by the Senate April 21.
“I left them (in committee) with a challenge, as a point of pure information, that the omnibus package that came out of the Senate, adopted 26-6, would save more babies and it would allow and encourage stronger and better health of young mothers than the pared-down version of the bill,” Messer said.
Messer and the other pro-life lobbyists chose to load up Loudon’s base bill with several far-reaching provisions that ultimately—and perhaps predictably in the face of tradition—died.
“It was not a mistake,” Messer said. “It was historic. It set a trend. It did raise the bar. It failed for a lot of reasons. We couldn’t even outline the complexity of the politics on (why it failed) in one issue of The Pathway, even if we took every page. It is a disappointment.”
Messer failed but Blunt was appreciative.
“It does not appear to me that Kerry was working to sabotage these two good bills in the close of the session,” said Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson.
Missouri Right to Life now has chosen to take on a more prophetic role within the pro-life community by talking about the governor’s ties with big business.
Susan Klein, Missouri Right to Life legislative liaison and a member of Concord Baptist Church, Jefferson City, questions the governor’s pro-life pedigree based on his choice to keep on parroting the pro-cloning language of The Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City. Right to Life maintains there is incongruity between the governor’s stated goals of continuing efforts to position Missouri as a national leader in life sciences while at the same time passing parental consent law and implementing tougher restrictions on abortion clinics.
“Through our governor and through our Legislature, Stowers is being able to dictate what can and cannot be pro-life in the state of Missouri,” Klein said.
Messer knows that his role as one of four leaders in the Missouri pro-life lobbying camp may require him to go before the governor in grace and humility.
“None of us recognize the complexity of running the governor’s office in the state of Missouri,” he said. “There’s a reason why only one man is elected governor of 51/2 million people and all the things that entail and comprise the great sovereign state of Missouri. It is a huge responsibility. We have a responsibility to be careful with our criticisms.
“As ambassadors of Christ, it’s our responsibility to maintain our criticism as constructive criticism, not destructive criticism. Some people want to be destructive with their criticisms—certain legislative members and certain grassroots folks. We don’t have that right before a holy God.
“Let’s start from scratch. Let’s prepare for this special session in September, and let’s see if we can’t honor God rather than honoring ourselves.”