Efforts to end abortions in Missouri are working. Missouri women had 1,019 fewer abortions in 2010 than in 2009, a 9.4 percent decrease, according to Missouri State Health Department statistics. The 9,796 abortions performed in Missouri in 2010 represented the fewest since 1973.
In the past decade, Missouri Southern Baptists have been at the forefront of attempts to save the state’s unborn. The Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) has passed several pro-life resolutions at its annual meetings, most recently in 2011. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has passed 11 resolutions opposing abortion at its annual meetings from 1980 to 2011. In addition, the SBC’s 2000 Baptist Faith & Message – affirmed by the MBC – states that human life begins at “conception.” Through prayer, lobbying and supporting crisis pregnancy centers, Missouri Baptists are making a difference.
Attempts to run Planned Parenthood (the nation’s largest provider of taxpayer-funded abortions) out of the state are progressing. In 2005, Missouri became the first state to prohibit Planned Parenthood from teaching sex education in public schools. After all, how could any parent expect the nation’s largest abortion provider be trusted with teaching responsible sex education?
Praise God there are only two Planned Parenthood abortion clinics operating in Missouri. The St. Louis clinic suffered a net loss of more than $500,000 and cut payments to its abortion doctors by nearly one-sixth last year. The Columbia abortion mill was temporarily closed in 2010 because there was no doctor willing to perform abortions (that has been remedied and abortions resume in February).
The quest to save Missouri’s unborn goes back to the mid-1980s when a parental consent law was passed. The latest push against abortion gained steam in 2003, when the General Assembly overrode a veto of a bill by Democrat Gov. Bob Holden. It requires a licensed physician to discuss with the patient the facts and risks of abortion 24 hours prior to the procedure.
Former Republican Gov. Matt Blunt aggressively pursued the closing of Planned Parenthood clinics two years later. It was under the Blunt administration that Senate Bill 370 passed, a measure crafted by MBC Legislative Liaison Kerry Messer. In addition to prohibiting Planned Parenthood from teaching sex education in public schools, it required abortion facilities, which complete one abortion or more in the second trimester of pregnancy, or five abortions or more during the first trimester of pregnancy, to be an ambulatory surgical center. It forces abortion clinics to submit to state health inspections and ensure sterile environments. During Blunt’s tenure bills were enacted that require physicians to have clinical privileges at a hospital that offers OB/GYN care within 30 miles of where the abortion is performed. It also prohibits intentional assistance to a minor to obtain an abortion without required informed consent from a parent or guardian.
Senate Bill 370 also established the Missouri Alternatives to Abortion Services Program which provides counseling to pregnant women as well as assistance to women in caring for their children and/or placing them up for adoption. Democrat Gov. Jay Nixon has allowed funding for the program to continue, despite being pro-choice. Another bill passed in Missouri in 2009, banning abortions after 20 weeks gestation except when continuation of the pregnancy will create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major body function of the mother. In 2010, Missouri became the fifth state to opt out of some of the abortion funding in President Obama’s national health care reform law, popularly known as ObamaCare. The bill also provides women the ability to see an ultrasound of their unborn child before an abortion. It also gives women considering an abortion 24 hours to reflect on the ultrasound and information they would receive on fetal development. Nixon did not sign the 2009 and 2010 bills (a veto override was likely), leaving them to become law.
More than 53 million babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973. That comes to a 31.5 percent loss in the younger generation under age 40. More than 17 million African-American babies have been slaughtered. The social and economic cost due to this loss of life is staggering. The estimated loss in U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) exceeds $38 trillion – more than twice our national debt. Only God knows how many Albert Einsteins, Steven Jobs or curers of cancer have been killed. Experts say even if abortion ended today, it will take America a generation to recover from the carnage.
Meanwhile, President Obama continues to fund Planned Parenthood. Missouri has other ideas. It is also an election year.
DON HINKLE / editor