Pro-life Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has long since had the option of taking either or both of a two-tier approach to protecting his state “Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act.” One was to appeal directly to the Supreme Court, the other was the unusual step of first going to the full 8th Circuit.
However, since Attorney General Schmitt went directly to the Supreme Court and the plaintiffs did not asked for a rehearing in front of the full eleven members, it was surprising that on July 13, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an “en banc” (all judges participating). They agreed to rehear a June decision by a divided panel that affirmed a lower court decision preventing the state of Missouri from enforcing a law that makes it unlawful for a person to “perform or induce an abortion on a woman if the person knows that the woman is seeking the abortion solely because of a prenatal diagnosis, test, or screening indicating Down Syndrome or the potential of Down Syndrome in an unborn child.”
In light of this, the Supreme Court issued a brief two sentence long order today that at this time it will not review Judge Sach’s decision overturning Missouri’s law banning most abortions at eight weeks–the Heartbeat Law—and that part of the law prohibiting abortion when the abortionist know that the child has been diagnosed with Down syndrome.
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The case was heard on September 21. Once the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rules on the case, the High Court said that either party could appeal the outcome.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
