Missouri AG threatens to sue cities that help cover out-of-state abortion travel

“Working households are battling to pay for gasoline & meals,” Attorney Common Eric Schmitt, who is also currently functioning for a U.S. Senate seat, explained in a tweet July 1, a working day just after the Kansas City Council accepted the legislation. “They fork in excess of their tricky acquired income in taxes & now St Louis & KC ‘leaders’ want to spend individuals challenging attained tax dollars on abortions. No way. Any endeavor to do so by towns or counties in Missouri will be fulfilled with a lawsuit.”

In a tweet later that exact working day, Schmitt referenced Quinton Lucas, Kansas City’s 37-12 months-previous mayor and a supporter of abortion legal rights. Schmitt wrote that in “his in no way ending and embarrassing quest to be a nationally appropriate mayor and pad his progressive bona fides—Mayor Q™️ not only needs to get taxpayer revenue absent from police and community protection he now would like taxpayers to fund abortions.”

The resolution, even so, explicitly suggests that money for out-of-point out vacation will not arrive from taxpayer dollars or the city’s general fund, in accordance to KCUR, the nearby NPR affiliate. In point, the resolution doesn’t even mention abortion, however it intends to reimburse town workforce and dependents who need to go away Missouri for healthcare. Lucas explained the resolution was penned in a fashion that doesn’t “welcome a lawful problem,” in accordance to the Kansas Metropolis Star. 

Lucas’s office did not immediately return a MarketWatch ask for for remark on how out-of-state travel would be funded.

“Using tricky-earned taxpayer bucks, irrespective of whether it be ARPA money or other forms of earnings, to fund nonsensical threats and meritless lawsuits violates the point out lawyer general’s ethical obligations as a Missouri lawyer,” Lucas mentioned in a assertion responding to Schmitt’s threats, referencing the 2021 American Rescue Program Act. He extra that the city would proceed “to stand up for the flexibility of Missouri women and Missouri family members.”

It’s worth noting that Kansas Metropolis inhabitants would probably not have to vacation all that significantly for the technique: There are two clinics undertaking abortions in close by Overland Park, Kansas, and abortion access is nevertheless secured by Kansas’ structure. Even so, individuals abortion protections could be undone if voters approve a constitutional modification this August that would override a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court docket ruling guaranteeing Kansans’ right to abortion. If that ruling is overturned, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature could move serious restrictions on abortion access. 

St. Louis County, which also borders a state exactly where abortion stays accessible — Illinois — is weighing a related evaluate to allocate at minimum $1 million in federal American Rescue System dollars to include abortion-connected travel expenses, in accordance to St. Louis Public Radio. The method alone would not be funded, but, critically, the evaluate would implement beyond governing administration staff, according to the Kansas Town Star.

Schmitt also threatened the town of St. Louis and St. Louis County with litigation if they “attempt to authorize taxpayer-funded abortions.”

Missouri was amongst the 13 states with so-identified as bring about bans developed to rapidly curtail abortion access once Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Courtroom selection, was overturned. Shortly immediately after the Supreme Court’s ruling last month, Missouri — which experienced steadily chipped absent at abortion rights for years — swiftly blocked all abortions except in cases of a health-related crisis, with no exceptions for incest or rape.