LITTLE AGREEMENT ON EFFECT OF ABORTION RULING IN MISSOURI

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision striking down Nebraska's ban on so-called partial-birth abortions, those on opposite sides of the issue disagree on how the ruling will impact a similar Missouri law.

Supporters of the 1999 Missouri statute say it is drafted more narrowly than the Nebraska law; opponents claim it has even greater constitutional problems.

Republican state Sen. Peter Kinder called the Nebraska decision the "most extreme abortion ruling ever" and said Missouri's law, which creates the crime of infanticide, is "more bullet proof."

One of Kinder's colleagues who opposes the measure disagreed.

"I'd be very surprised if the infanticide ban passed constitutional muster," said Sen. Ken Jacob, D-Columbia.

By a narrow 5-4 vote, the high court ruled Wednesday that the Nebraska law violates a woman's constitutional right by imposing an "undue burden" on her decision to end a pregnancy.

The court followed that action Thursday by ordering a lower court to reconsider decisions upholding partial-birth abortion bans in two other states and letting stand another lower court's decision striking down a third such law.

The 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Illinois and Wisconsin laws as constitutional last October. The 7th Circuit will have to re-evaluate its rulings under the standards set by the Nebraska decision.

Last October, the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals struck down an Iowa law, saying that while the law purported to prohibit just one procedure, "other abortion procedures would be prohibited as well, however, and this is the problem." The 8th Circuit's ruling will stand.

Twenty-seven other states have enacted some type of ban on partial-birth abortions. The Supreme Court justices differed Wednesday on how its Nebraska ruling will affect those laws.

After three years of trying, the Missouri General Assembly passed its version in October, overriding Gov. Mel Carnahan's veto with overwhelming, bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate. Every lawmaker from Southeast Missouri, Republican or Democrat, voted for the override.

The measure targets infanticide, and opponents call that a thinly-veiled attempt to outlaw all abortions. The law is currently being challenged in state and federal courts and is blocked from being enforced.

"It was really an attack on a woman's right to choose," Carnahan said of the Missouri law. "That's the reason these bills are falling and that's the reason the Nebraska bill has gone down."

Louis DeFeo, a lobbyist for the Missouri Catholic Conference who helped draft the legislation, said the Missouri law is narrower than Nebraska's.

"Nebraska's statute was so broad, not only did it ban partial-birth abortions but it banned all abortions, and that goes too far," DeFeo said. "The Legislature had the advantage to look at other state statutes and other court decisions and drafted around them."

Kinder, one the General Assembly's staunchest abortion rights foes, called the laws in Nebraska and the other states "first generation" statutes. Lawmakers in Missouri, he said, learned from the constitutional questions those laws raised.

"Nebraska's statute is an anti-abortion statute," Kinder said. "Our statute is by definition an anti-infanticide statute. The Missouri statute specifically excludes it from reaching any legal abortions."

Kinder noted that the Supreme Court's majority held the Nebraska law unconstitutional, in part, because there is no exception for the procedure to be performed to protect the health of the mother. That shouldn't apply in Missouri's case, Kinder said.

"Is there a health exception for infanticide? We think that question answers itself," Kinder said.

Jacob said the law is unconstitutionally vague, perhaps even more so than Nebraska's. Jacob led a filibuster by a handful of Senate Democrats to block the override of Carnahan's veto.

"Here (in Missouri) we already have an example of someone looking at the law and not knowing how to obey it," Jacob said, referring to recent action by officials at Boone County Hospital.

Citing the infanticide law, hospital officials last month refused to disconnect terminally ill newborns from life support. Even though the law is not currently being enforced, the officials feared doctors could be prosecuted later should the statute be upheld.

The vagueness issue raised by the Nebraska law is more significant in the Missouri law, Jacob said, because the latter statute doesn't address the question of fetal viability.

"The infanticide bill's vagueness is not only could it possibly ban one or two (abortion) procedures, it possibly bans all procedures because their is no viability provision in our bill," Jacob said. "Both Nebraska and Missouri's laws are over-broad; ours is even more over-broad."

Jacob also feels the lack of a health exception is an important issue.

"That is very significant," Jacob said. "The whole issue is medical necessity. If there is a purpose for this procedure validated by a doctor as medically necessary, you can't deny a woman a procedure that may be needed to protect her health."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ruling fallout

* In Illinois and Wisconsin, the high court ordered a federal appeals court that had upheld laws in those two states to reconsider them in light of standards set by Wednesday's ruling in the Nebraska case.

* In one of many orders issued in the wake of the 1999-2000 term, the justices let stand a federal appeals court ruling that struck down Iowa's partial-birth abortion law.