Pro-abortion advocates push back hearing to May
By Allen Palmeri
Staff Writer
January 20, 2004
JEFFERSON CITY – Pro-abortion advocates, working with a federal district judge in St. Louis who has a history of siding with abortionists in previous cases, have succeeded in delaying a hearing from Jan. 27 to May 25 on whether to permanently block a Missouri law that requires a 24-hour waiting period for abortions.
Senior U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright delayed the hearing after attorneys for plaintiff Planned Parenthood affiliates asked for more time to depose expert witnesses and resolve pretrial issues.
Wright has sided with the abortionists in previous cases involving bans on the use of public funds, employees or buildings for abortions and a prohibition on insurance policies from covering abortion services without extra co-payments, the Springfield News-Leader reported. All of these rulings have eventually been reversed, the News-Leader reported.
On Dec. 2, the Pathway reported that this 24-hour waiting period case demonstrates how pro-abortion advocates typically operate when they are left with but one option: stalling. A pro-abortion judge is sought, and their legal case is filed in that judge’s court. Wright, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, is that judge in Missouri, having already launched the delay process in a partial-birth abortion case in 1999 that has yet to become law.
Missouri is one of 20 states to pass informed consent laws with 18-hour or 24-hour reflection periods. Informed consent laws are constitutional as an expression of the state’s interest in the health and safety of women, said Dorinda Bordlee, an attorney with the Chicago-based public interest law firm Americans United for Life. It may take as long as two years, Bordlee said, but the pro-life cause in Missouri ought to prevail based on a controlling U.S. Supreme Court case out of Pennsylvania in 1992.
“The court should allow the will of the people to prevail," she said.
The will of the people was known when Missouri lawmakers in 2003 not only passed the bill but later overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Bob Holden. The override was Sept. 11, meaning the law was to have gone into effect Oct. 11. The lawsuit by pro-abortion advocates has prevented the measure from becoming law.