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HB 400, a bill that would ban telemedicine abortions in Missouri, is on the House
perfection calendar and will be considered
soon. Let your voice be heard!
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HOW DOES HB 400 BAN
TELEMEDICINE ABORTIONS?
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RU-486 is the drug most commonly used for non-surgical abortions up to 9 weeks of pregnancy. The drug is available primarily through facilities owned and operated by Planned Parenthood, and acts by blocking the uterus's reception of progesterone, the hormone needed to support the development of the uterus and thereby the fetus in the womb.
There are some states (most notably Iowa) in which RU-486 is being offered to pregnant women through "telemedicine". These women speak with a physician via videoconferencing, and RU-486 is dispensed automatically out of the drawer of a machine at the remote location in which the woman finds herself.
HB 400 is intended to prevent Planned Parenthood from setting up telemedicine clinics in remote portions of Missouri to perform telemedicine abortions. According to testimony offered by a former Planned Parenthood employee in Iowa at a recent hearing on HB 400, Planned Parenthood of Iowa added clinics after starting a telemedicine abortion practice there, increasing the number of Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa from 5 to 17.
HB 400 requires that a physician be present to administer RU-486, and also requires that the physician "make all reasonable efforts to ensure that the patient returns twelve to eighteen days" afterwards to assess her condition and ensure that the pregnancy has been terminated. This bill will subvert any efforts by Planned Parenthood to perform telemedicine abortions in Missouri.
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WHAT IS THE MCC'S
POSITION ON HB 400?
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The Missouri Catholic Conference strongly supports HB 400, since it provides reasonable regulations on the administration and use of RU-486, and will prevent Missouri abortion providers from participating in telemedicine abortion procedures.
While modern technological advances have provided us with many blessings, it unfortunately has also made abortion available through the use of chemical drugs, ostensibly with the goal of making the process of having an abortion less invasive and expensive. The Internet and video conferencing also make abortion more accessible in some states, presumably for the sake of convenience. Needless to say, the MCC believes that such practices should be vigorously resisted.
In speaking against such modern developments, Pope John Paul II lamented the spread of what he termed a "conspiracy against life," stating:
In order to facilitate the spread of abortion, enormous sums of money have been invested and continue to be invested in the production of pharmaceutical products, which make it possible to kill the fetus in the mother's womb without recourse to medical assistance. On this point, scientific research itself seems almost exclusively preoccupied with developing products which are ever more simple and effective in suppressing life and which at the same time are capable of removing abortion from any kind of control or social responsibility. (Evangelium Vitae, No.13, emphasis in original)
The common good demands that we avoid falling into the trap of spreading the evil of abortion at all, much less through the misappropriation of modern technology. Let your Missouri representative hear from you!
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| WHAT YOU CAN DO |
- Contact your Missouri House Representative and ask him/her to vote in favor of HB 400 when it comes up for a vote on the House floor (see contact information in upper left corner)
- Forward this alert to friends and family members
- Report back to the MCC on what your representative is saying
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