The bill was sponsored by state Sen. Brad Hudson (R-Cape Fair) and carried through the Missouri House by Rep. Brian Seitz (R-Branson). It cleared the General Assembly in mid-May after sharp debate on the floor and sat on Kehoe's desk for two months before he signed it.
Under the new law, an infant born alive during or after an abortion or attempted abortion is granted "the same rights, privileges, and immunities as any other person, citizen, and resident of Missouri." Missouri Right to Life thanked the governor, saying babies who survive an abortion attempt will now be guaranteed the same standard of care given to every other newborn in the state.
Democratic lawmakers who opposed the bill countered that Missouri law already treats the killing of a born child as homicide, and argued the statute mainly serves to intimidate providers rather than address a real gap in the law. Legal observers have also pointed to an unusual nonseverability clause in the bill: if a court strikes down any single provision, the entire act falls with it — a construction critics call almost unheard of in state legislation, and one nearly certain to draw a lawsuit.
What the Law Cannot Give
Set the vote counts and the committee rooms to one side for a moment. Strip the bill down to the one question sitting underneath it: does a child who draws breath outside his mother belong to somebody, or does he belong to nobody? Missouri's legislature has now answered that question in ink. He belongs. He belongs to his mother and his father, he belongs to the protection of the law, and though the statute has no word for it, he belongs to the God who knit him together before anyone in Jefferson City ever took a vote.
A law can be undone by a judge or a future session. It cannot be undone that a child in the womb, or gasping for his first breath outside it, is a soul made in the image of God. That truth does not wait on legislation. It was true the day Missouri's statute books were silent on the matter, and it will be true long after this law is forgotten.
"If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain;" (Proverbs 24:11)
That verse was not written about a hospital delivery room, but it fits one. Somebody, somewhere, is always being drawn toward death who could yet be delivered from it — a baby on a table, a mother in a crisis pregnancy center parking lot working up the nerve to go in, a man in a bar deciding whether tonight is the night he finally drinks himself past caring. The command is the same in every case: do not look away. Do not say, as the next verse warns, "Behold, we knew it not." God, who pondereth the heart, knows exactly what you knew and when you knew it.
My friend, the same Lord who numbered that child's days before one of them came to be is numbering yours right now.
"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb." (Psalm 139:13)
You were covered in the womb by the same hand that covers you now. And if you have never turned to the One who made you, hear this plainly: you too were drawn toward a death far worse than any abortionist's table — the death of a soul cut off from God forever. Christ did not pass you by. He went to a cross and let Himself be slain so that you, who were dead in your sins, could be delivered. Missouri passed a law this month to protect the body of a newborn. Heaven has already made a way to save the soul of a sinner. One is a statute. The other is a Savior, and He is not waiting on any legislature to act. He is waiting on you.