In the May issue of National Right to Life News, we talk with Mary Spaulding Balch, NRLC’s State Legislative Director, about the 2008 legislative session. One of the areas some people whose positions on abortion may vary vastly have found common cause is trying to ensure that women are not coerced into abortion.

The following appears in today’s Columbia Daily Tribune, a newspaper in Missouri.

The headline reads, “Onder responds to Waters editorial.”

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State Rep. Bob Onder, R-Lake Saint Louis - a candidate for Congress - has replied to [an] editorial written by Tribune Publisher Hank Waters.

Waters panned Onder's legislation to modify the state's informed consent regulations for abortions. Waters said that supporters of the legislation "simply want to keep throwing stuff against the wall hoping a miracle will happen and some court might uphold one of their proposals."

Here's Onder's response:

Your April 21, 2008 editorial “Coercion,” concerns my House Bill 1831. This legislation, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 113 to 33, strengthens Missouri’s abortion informed consent law and makes it a crime to coerce a woman into having an abortion. One of the strongest criticisms in the editorial is that the bill’s provisions are unconstitutional. To the contrary, the bill was carefully drafted to comply with the relevant U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Gonzalez v. Carhart.

The key to the constitutionality of abortion laws is whether they impose an “undue burden” on the court-declared right to an abortion. The provisions of H.B. 1831 would not do so. Rather, the bill would give women the right to obtain specific information prior to an abortion and make it a crime to coerce a woman into having an abortion by

* Committing an already illegal act such as assault, battery, kidnapping, or threatening with a deadly weapon,
* Stalking or perpetrating violence against a woman,
* Threatening to fire a woman from her job unless she has an abortion,
* Threatening to take away a woman’s scholarship unless she has an abortion.

Ideally such a law would be unnecessary. Unfortunately there are all too many examples of women being coerced into having abortions by the behavior above.

This bill is designed to protect women and ensure that they are acting freely and are fully informed should they choose to have an abortion. This, I believe, is why the bill received such strong support. I look forward to the prompt action of the Missouri Senate and the Governor to protect Missouri women.

Robert F. Onder, M.D., J.D.
State Representative, District 13