A lawsuit filed by two GOP lawmakers challenges the cost estimate of a ballot initiative that would preserve abortion rights and encode it in the Missouri constitution.
State Rep. Hannah Kelly (R-Mountain Grove) and state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman (R-Arnold) along with anti-abortion activist Kathy Forck of New Bloomfield filed the complaint on Aug. 7.
“Our legal challenge to the fiscal note is not about individual officeholders, but about the omission of the true fiscal costs to individual Missourians with measures that could imperil their financial futures, and cost the state billions of dollars in health care funding,” Kelly, Coleman and Forck said in a joint statement.
Fitzpatrick
| Facebook
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Attorney General Andrew Bailey to approve the state auditor’s fiscal note summary to a ballot measure that could restore the right to abortion services statewide if approved by voters.
A fiscal note summary estimates the financial impact of the implementation of a bill.
“Missouri voters deserve complete fairness and transparency on the impact of initiative petitions so they can make fully-informed decisions," the plaintiffs told the St. Louis Record.
In their lawsuit, the pro-life plaintiffs allege that Republican state Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick’s determination that lifting the state’s abortion ban would have no cost to state government if it were approved by voters next year is inaccurate.
“While the human cost is high with unregulated abortion on demand, the financial cost of abortion is steep to individuals and taxpayers if they can be performed by non-doctors anywhere in Missouri throughout pregnancy – especially painful, late-term abortions right up until the moment of birth,” the plaintiffs stated.
They want the estimate to state that legalizing abortion could cost up to billions of dollars because Fitzpatrick’s assessment is “inaccurate in a way that is both misleading to voters and obvious to and curable by the auditor," according to the complaint.
The Right to Life of the Unborn Child Act, which became effective on June 24, 2022, prohibits abortion except in cases of medical emergency and imposes a Class B felony on any person who knowingly performs or induces an abortion of an unborn child. Providers of abortion are also subject to losing their medical licenses under the law.
“Women and girls would be endangered by unsafe abortions induced by non-physicians, and this would cause great personal harm to them, their families and taxpayers," the plaintiffs added.