CV NEWS FEED // Last week, Missouri’s attorney general won two victories in court for the unborn.
On June 30, attorney general Andrew Bailey was granted a preliminary injunction against the city of St. Louis for misusing government funds to pay for abortions, and also won a case against eleven religious leaders who challenged Missouri’s pro-life laws.
Bailey’s suit against St. Louis came after the city illegally tried to fund abortions after the Supreme Court handed down the June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision. However, by funding abortions, St. Louis also went against city laws that were signed much earlier than Dobbs. In 2019, the Missouri General Assembly passed a bill declaring that the state of Missouri had become a sanctuary protecting all pregnant women and their unborn children. The bill was signed into law by the governor later that year.
At the same time, the General Assembly also enacted a policy known as the “Right to Life of the Unborn Child Act”. In 2022, six minutes after the court handed down Dobbs, the Act went into effect, stating that “no abortion shall be performed or induced upon a woman, except in cases of medical emergency.”
One month after Dobbs, St. Louis established a “reproductive equity fund” that utilized taxpayer dollars and federal funding for abortions, giving the city a grant of $1.5 million and another $250,000 for the fund’s administrative purposes.
In response, Bailey filed a petition, claiming that St. Louis’ actions were illegal and asking for an injunction against the city. Judge Jason Sengheiser granted him the injunction on June 30.
Sengheiser gave Bailey another legal win on the same day against fourteen ministers from various religions. In January 2023, the ministers filed a lawsuit challenging eleven components of the 2019 pro-life law, saying that as Missouri taxpayers, their religious freedom rights under the Missouri constitution were violated by the abortion restrictions. Bailey called for the lawsuit to be dismissed, claiming that the pro-life law is entirely constitutional. Judge Sengheiser dismissed ten of the eleven challenges, but refused to dismiss the ministers’ challenge against the total abortion ban.
“Yesterday was a momentous day for women and their unborn children as Missouri courts upheld state law standing for the sanctity of life,” Bailey said in a press release on July 1. “As long as I’m Attorney General, my office will continue to use every tool at its disposal to protect the unborn. Our children are worth the fight.”
