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

“Working people are having difficulties to shell out for fuel & food stuff,” Legal professional General Eric Schmitt, who is also currently working for a U.S. Senate seat, said in a tweet July 1, a day after the Kansas Town Council permitted the laws. “They fork in excess of their tricky gained dollars in taxes & now St Louis & KC ‘leaders’ want to spend those tough acquired tax dollars on abortions. No way. Any attempt to do so by cities or counties in Missouri will be met with a lawsuit.”

In a tweet afterwards that exact same working day, Schmitt referenced Quinton Lucas, Kansas City’s 37-yr-aged mayor and a supporter of abortion rights. Schmitt wrote that in “his in no way ending and embarrassing quest to be a nationally applicable mayor and pad his progressive bona fides—Mayor Q™️ not only desires to just take taxpayer funds away from law enforcement and public safety he now wishes taxpayers to fund abortions.”

The resolution, nonetheless, explicitly says that funds for out-of-point out travel will not come from taxpayer bucks or the city’s standard fund, according to KCUR, the local NPR affiliate. In reality, the resolution doesn’t even point out abortion, while it intends to reimburse metropolis workforce and dependents who need to have to leave Missouri for healthcare. Lucas said the resolution was created in a manner that doesn’t “welcome a authorized challenge,” according to the Kansas Metropolis Star. 

Lucas’s office environment didn’t right away return a MarketWatch request for remark on how out-of-point out travel would be funded.

“Using tough-earned taxpayer pounds, no matter whether it be ARPA money or other varieties of earnings, to fund nonsensical threats and meritless lawsuits violates the condition attorney general’s ethical obligations as a Missouri lawyer,” Lucas claimed in a statement responding to Schmitt’s threats, referencing the 2021 American Rescue Strategy Act. He included that the metropolis would carry on “to stand up for the liberty of Missouri girls and Missouri families.”

It is worthy of noting that Kansas City inhabitants would potentially not have to journey all that far for the method: There are two clinics accomplishing abortions in nearby Overland Park, Kansas, and abortion entry is still secured by Kansas’ constitution. However, people abortion protections could be undone if voters approve a constitutional modification this August that would override a 2019 Kansas Supreme Courtroom ruling guaranteeing Kansans’ appropriate to abortion. If that ruling is overturned, the state’s Republican-managed legislature could move serious limitations on abortion access. 

St. Louis County, which also borders a condition the place abortion continues to be available — Illinois — is weighing a similar measure to allocate at least $1 million in federal American Rescue Program income to go over abortion-similar journey expenses, in accordance to St. Louis Public Radio. The technique by itself would not be funded, but, critically, the evaluate would utilize outside of government personnel, 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 among the the 13 states with so-named cause bans made to immediately curtail abortion access after Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision, was overturned. Shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling last thirty day period, Missouri — which experienced steadily chipped away at abortion rights for decades — quickly blocked all abortions except in situations of a professional medical emergency, with no exceptions for incest or rape.