JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – In an effort to protect the unborn, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed an amicus brief with 18 other states supporting Florida’s House Bill 5, which prohibits abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation, with exceptions for life, health, and fetal abnormality. Planned Parenthood is challenging the pro-life law at the Florida Supreme Court.
“I want to enforce the laws as written and protect unborn children from this blatant attack on state sovereignty,” said Attorney General Bailey. “The people’s elected representatives have spoken on the issue of abortion, and my office will use every tool at its disposal to uphold the rights of state legislatures to defend the unborn.”
Following the Dobbs decision, many states have adopted tighter restrictions on abortion while others maintained or embraced more permissive abortion laws. The brief notes, that “In some states, the decision to adopt a permissive abortion regime has been made not by the people or legislators, but by courts.”
The attorneys general argue, “This raises serious problems. It imposes on the people a regime that they never embraced, puts courts at the center of a political and moral issue that they can never resolve, and undermines our democratic tradition. It replicates at the state level the problems that Dobbs recently dispensed with at the federal level.”
The states urged the court to “make clear that the hard issue of abortion is for the people” and reject the injunctive relief against HB 5.
Attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia joined Attorney General Bailey in filing this brief.