Missouri's Republican-led Senate has now passed a bill to ban abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy.
Senators approved the legislation 24-10 early Thursday with just hours left before a Friday deadline to pass bills. It needs at least one more vote of approval in the GOP-led House before it can go to Republican Gov. Mike Parson, who voiced support for it on Wednesday.
Parson called on state senators to take action, joining a movement of GOP-dominated state legislatures emboldened by the possibility that a more conservative Supreme Court could overturn its landmark ruling legalizing the procedure.
Their vote came only hours after Alabama's governor signed the most stringent abortion ban in the nation on Wednesday, making performing an abortion a felony in nearly all cases.
The Missouri proposal includes exceptions for medical emergencies, but not for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. Doctors would face five to 15 years in prison for violating the eight-week cutoff. Women who receive abortions at eight weeks or later into a pregnancy wouldn't be prosecuted.
Outnumbered Senate Democrats launched into an attack on the bill before Republican supporters had a chance to bring it up for debate on the Senate floor.
"So much of this bill is just shaming women into some kind of complacency that says we are vessels of pregnancy rather than understanding that women's lives all hold different stories," St. Louis-area Democratic Sen. Jill Schupp told colleagues.
"We cannot paint with a broad brush and interfere by putting a law forward that tells them what they can and cannot do."
"This is the type of legislation that is designed to withstand a challenge and to actually save lives in our state." Other provisions in the wide-ranging abortion bill include a ban on abortions based solely on race, sex or a "prenatal diagnosis, test, or screening indicating Down Syndrome or the potential of Down Syndrome."
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