CV NEWS FEED // The Thomas More Society has published a statement explaining their lawsuit against the Missouri “Reproductive Freedom” ballot.
The August 22 lawsuit was filed by State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, Kathy Forck, and Marguerite Forrest, as CatholicVote reported. Thomas More Society attorneys are representing the senators.
The society’s article stated that the petition that got the Amendment onto the ballot violated state laws “by failing to specify the laws and constitutional provisions that it would repeal, directly or by implication.”
Senior Counsel Mary Catherine Martin explained Missouri law requires lawmakers to fully explain the effects of a proposed amendment and limit proposed amendments to cover only one subject. This protects voters from approving something with hidden effects.
“Amendment 3 is rife with hidden effects,” Martin continued. “Its main provision creates a totally novel, and limitless, ‘super-right’ ranking higher than life, speech, religion, equal protection, and due process.” This right “would require the courts, when making decisions relating to reproduction, to place this ‘super-right’ above the interests of anyone else, and even of society as a whole.”
Furthermore, the Amendment would repeal nearly all of Missouri’s regulations on any kind of reproductive healthcare, including IVF, abortion, cloning, stem cell research, and gender transition surgery.
It would also repeal Missouri’s regulations on discrimination-based abortion, which protect unborn children with disabilities, and take away laws forbidding late-term and partial-birth abortion.
The Amendment also takes away the rights of people who are harmed in reproductive healthcare, as those people and their families “would no longer have access to the courts to remedy such injuries, such as in medical malpractice and wrongful death actions,” Thomas More Society states. As the Amendment repeals parental notification and consent laws, minors would be at a greater risk of exploitation.
The Thomas More Society’s article concludes, “Because the initiative petition did not satisfy state election laws that protect Missouri voters, the filed petition seeks to reverse the certification of proposed Amendment 3 and remove it from the November ballot.”