That’s not exactly accurate - the Missouri law does not exempt the termination of an ectopic pregnancy from the definition of abortion :
(a) The act of using or prescribing any instrument, device, medicine, drug, or any other means or substance with the intent to destroy the life of an embryo or fetus in his or her mother’s womb; or
(b) The intentional termination of the pregnancy of a mother by using or prescribing any instrument, device, medicine, drug, or other means or substance with an intention other than to increase the probability of a live birth or to remove a dead unborn child;
ETA (b) does not mention “womb”
but in a separate section that will become effective if Roe v Wade is overturned goes on to say
Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, no abortion shall be performed or induced upon a woman, except in cases of medical emergency. Any person who knowingly performs or induces an abortion of an unborn child in violation of this subsection shall be guilty of a class B felony, as well as subject to suspension or revocation of his or her professional license by his or her professional licensing board. A woman upon whom an abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subsection shall not be prosecuted for a conspiracy to violate the provisions of this subsection.
The definition for “medical emergency” includes an ectopic pregnancy, so terminating an ectopic pregnancy is defined as an abortion. But it will not be prohibited when that new law takes effect. There’s also a part where only a physician can perform an abortion- and a physician terminating an ectopic pregnancy would therefore be legal even if it was a medication abortion as this new bill only applies to abortions that are in violation of state or federal law.
So in putting this whole mess together , it seems like this new “trafficking” law is intended to prevent anyone other than a physician from providing the medication for a medical abortion - which makes sense because two of the sections the bill amends ( 338.270, and 338.337) are in the title regulating pharmacists.
It’s not unreasonable to want to prevent non-physicians from providing abortion inducing medication to women with ectopic pregnancies - but this particular bill is badly written, and has parts that make no sense. Bumping it up to a Class A felony makes a little bit of sense for an ectopic pregnancy - but doing so for handing over the pills ( or device-what device are they even talking about?) in a car or within public housing doesn’t make any sense at all.
Thanks to @doreen , I’m going to acknowledge that I overlooked the second paragraph of the definition. Which makes musings on the definition of “womb” less interesting.
My DIL took drugs to terminate her ectopic pregnancy. You are completely wrong on this point.
Then the legal language is broken, because it’s sure as hell medically considered an abortion.
An ectopic pregnancy is treated by aborting the embryo before it kills the mother. It’s an abortion. That’s really not at all ambiguous.
Err, an ectopic pregnancy isn’t actually an emergency until pretty late into it, when it’s too late to treat it WITHOUT harming the mother.
I have no idea what you think an ectopic pregnancy is, but it’s a normal human embryo that gets implanted in a place that can’t support a pregnancy, typically one of the fallopian tubes. Other than being non-viable because it will kill the mother, it’s a normal pregnancy, and the only treatment to save the life of the mother is to abort the embryo before it gets too large.
A “medical emergency” under the code is “a condition which, based on reasonable medical judgment, so complicates the medical condition of a pregnant woman as to necessitate the immediate abortion of her pregnancy to avert the death of the pregnant woman or for which a delay will create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”
I suppose it may depend on your definition “harming the mother,” but if delay would result in a serious risk of harm, then it’s an emergency.
Yeah, but you don’t have to terminate the pregnancy “immediately” until it’s really late. It’s just that the earlier you start, the larger the margin of safety is for the mother, and the less physically traumatic it is. I don’t think an early ectopic pregnancy would qualify as an emergency in most cases.
It would come in under " or for which a delay will create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.” which doesn’t require that it must be needed immediately. It wouldn’t qualify under the everyday definition of “emergency”, but this law defines “medical emergency” a little differently , more like “medically necessary” is normally used.
So, this law uses unique definitions of “emergency” and of “abortion”. What else does it uniquely define? It’s almost as if the authors either don’t understand medicine or are trying to obscure what they intend.
It’s probably a bit of that - but it’s not uncommon for laws to define words a little differently than they are normally used. In my state “motor vehicle” does not include e-bikes although they have motors and “sale of a controlled substance” includes giving it to someone without receiving anything in return.
Except for the location of where the embryo embeds, yes it is normal. It’s a normal human embryo, the hormones flooding the woman are pretty normal for a pregnancy, it’s just positioned such that it can’t grow to maturity without killing the mother.
Do a little googling and learn what an ectopic pregnancy is. I suspect you are confusing it with a teratoma, which is an egg that develops into a weird cancer instead of an embryo.
Yeah, but killing it is still killing a human embryo. The Catholic church wants its members to jump through hoops: remove the fallopian tube and oh, shoot, now we can’t save the baby" rather than directly killing it, for instance, because they don’t want to condone killing it.
Other than that it’s “normal”. This is same kind of mumbo jumbo pushed by the abortion industry lobbyists. They don’t care about protecting mothers or babies. All they are concerned about is protecting abortion industry profits.
The danger of an untreated ectopic pregnancy is if the embryo develops to the point that the fallopian tube cannot contain it. The fallopian tube will rupture. Because of the developing pregnancy and accompanying hormones increase the blood supply to the pelvic region, the rupture causes a massive hemorrhage that will kill the mother.
The rupture will tear the embryo from its attachment, severing its blood supply and killing it.
If an ectopic pregnancy is untreated, the mother and the embryo both die. If the ectopic pregnancy IS treated, the only casualty is the embryo.
By the very nature of an ectopic implantation, the embryo will always die.
And yet again I am completely bewildered by legislators getting involved in something that is none of their business.
Do you know that methotrexate is an old, out-of-patent drug used for lots of other things? And that ob-gyns get paid more when there’s a baby than when there’s an abortion?
In any event, definition sections are wonderful. It’s tedious to discuss people’s personal preferred definitions of words. There can still be some definitional uncertainty, but it makes life so much easier when a law comes it’s own set of definitions. It’s hard to argue that they’re trying to obscure what they intend when they tell you what they intend in greater than normal detail.