Caroline Kelly at CNN reports:

Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement that her organization "will not cower to politicians who are trying to dismantle our access to safe, legal abortion—not in Missouri, and not anywhere else." : no matter what." "These dangerous and illegal bans put people's health and lives at risk," she said, adding, "We will fight to ensure that every person can still access reproductive health care : no matter what."

The original draft of the Missouri law contained “fetal heartbeat” language, but this was later removed by state Rep. Nick Schroer. Other states—four this year alone—have passed laws intended to provoke a direct challenge to the Supreme Court’s 46-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling because advocates believe that the court’s more conservative makeup means the decision could be overturned. Schroer told the news site Vox that his approach is one designed for “withstanding judicial challenges, not causing them.” But that’s nonsense. Roe holds that women have a constitutional right to an abortion until a fetus becomes viable outside the womb, which is at least three times as long as the eight-week limit.

Schroer’s wording includes a “ladder” of time limits designed to take effect should the eight-week limit be rejected by the courts. Those kick in at 14, 18, or 20 weeks. So far, 20 states have passed laws that bar abortion after 20 weeks’ gestation. Some of these—in North Carolina, for example—have been legally challenged and blocked. But in other states—Indiana, Kansas, and Ohio—the laws have gone into effect, even though it puts those states in conflict with Roe.

Like two dozen other states eager to control women’s sexuality and their reproductive choices, Missouri has in the past eight years erected a plethora of obstacles to abortion in addition to the eight-week ban. These include state-mandated “counseling” of women that includes outright lies about the impacts of abortion, a 72-hour waiting period, government funding of phony “pregnancy crisis centers” run by forced-birthers, and the banning of telemedicine for abortions.

Most troublesome of all, the Missouri legislature’s actions have contributed to closing all but one of the state’s abortion clinics. State health authorities are engaged in a legal battle to shut down that clinic, but it remains open under an administrative stay for the moment. The eight-week legislation also includes a “trigger” that would bar all abortions as soon as Roe is overturned, should that occur.