Missouri legislators pass ‘Born-Alive’ abortion bill, heads to governor 37%
By Sarah Kellogg38%
5/14/2026, 3:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Pessimism Bias, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Appeal to Emotion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 20.8% saturation with 130 hits. Analysis detected 862 faulty-reasoning hits from 624 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 43.5% and a BS Rank of 37% (13,882 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 63.40% of the article peer group.
The Missouri House on Wednesday passed legislation providing rights to “a child born alive during or after an abortion or attempted abortion.”
Members of the House voted 102-46 to pass the Senate bill, which includes The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
It now goes to Gov.
Mike Kehoe.
Under the legislation, anyone who would kill or attempt to kill a fetus born alive after an abortion attempt would be guilty of first-degree murder.
The legislation has strong support from House Republicans, like Rep.
Holly Jones, R-Eureka.
“It breaks my heart that we even have to have a bill like this, that we have to clarify and put into statute consequences,” Jones said.
Rep.
Melissa Schmidt, R-Eldridge, pushed back against the argument from Democrats that the passage of this bill is politically motivated.
“The concept that we should not be establishing regulations in regard to health care is ridiculous.
In my mind, in this body, we establish regulations on all sorts of topics.
It is absolutely our role,” Schmidt said.
Rep.
Pattie Mansur, D-Kansas City, said this will create a hostile environment for medical providers.
“This bill is actually about threatening physicians at a time when Missouri is struggling to hang on to physicians,” Mansur said.
Fetal viability, or the point when a fetus would be able to survive outside the womb, is generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
According to KFF health research, abortions at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy are uncommon and represent 1% of all abortions in the country.
The Senate passed the legislation last week.
It went through several changes, including stripping out language that made someone civilly liable if they performed, induced or attempted to induce an abortion.
That would have included medication abortions.
The bill contains language added by Senate Democrats that includes modifications to the Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review Board.
The legislation requires the board to have one member from each congressional district along with a demographically diverse membership.
Additionally, the bill changes some laws around stalking, including adding the offense of cyber-harassment.
Democratic House members repeatedly spoke against the bill on Wednesday.
Rep.
Ken Jamison, D-Gladstone, whose wife went through a miscarriage last year, said the focus on abortion creates consequences regarding maternal care in the state.
“Medical providers are already fleeing red states for blue states.
This bill will only exacerbate that problem, thus, a pro-life pregnant woman in rural Missouri will have a harder time to find prenatal care, which will then increase the chance of miscarriage,” Jamison said.
Some Senate Republicans spoke against the legislation last week, saying they did not agree with the additional language that was added onto the bill.
Additionally, Rep.
Bryant Wolfin, R-Ste.
Genevieve, who voted against the bill, said he was not confident the bill would survive a court challenge because of its multiple provisions.
“Is The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act worth taking that risk?
They have our single subject version over there.
We can still pass that one, but we're going to pass this knowing that three quarters of it has nothing to do with the original subject of the bill,” Wolfin said.
Before House members took a final vote to pass the bill, protestors in the galleries led chants against it.
The protestors were then escorted out.
The passage of the legislation comes the same year as Missouri voters will again decide the fate of abortion rights in the state.
The new Amendment 3, which Republicans voted to place on the ballot last session, would again ban most abortions in the state.
Unlike the prior abortion ban, it will allow for abortions in instances of rape and incest.
The legislation passed Wednesday is SB 999.
Speakers
6speakers43%attributed speech357writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
90%flagged-word coverageHolly Jones
29 attributed words11% of attributed speech46% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.