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| Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R) |
The 2019 law bans abortions committed purely due to an unborn child's race, sex, or prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome. The law also contains tiered abortion bans after eight, 14, 18, and 20 weeks of gestation. Hearing the challenge to this law would require the court to analyze each stage independently and state exactly if/when abortion bans are allowed.
According to the AG Schmitt's office, the Petition “presents three questions for the Supreme Court’s review”:
- Whether Missouri’s restriction on abortions performed solely because the unborn child may have Down syndrome is categorically invalid under Casey and Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), or whether it is a valid, reasonable regulation of abortion that seeks to prevent the elimination of children with Down syndrome through eugenic abortion?
- Whether Missouri’s restrictions on abortions performed after eight, fourteen, eighteen, and twenty weeks’ gestational age are categorically invalid, or whether they are valid, reasonable regulations of abortion that advance important state interests?
- Whether the “penumbral” right to abortion recognized in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and partially reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), should be overruled?
