Eric S. Schmitt, Attorney General of Missouri, et al. v. Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, Inc., et al.

Missouri’s House Bill 126 (“HB 126”), enacted in 2019, prohibits medical providers from performing abortions when the provider knows that the sole reason for the abortion is a pretrial diagnosis or screening indicating that the unborn child does, or may, have Down syndrome (the “Down Syndrome Provision”). The same bill prohibits abortion providers from performing abortions after eight weeks, fourteen weeks, eighteen weeks, and twenty weeks of gestational age, alternatively (the “Gestational Age Restrictions”). The Eighth Circuit invalidated both the Down Syndrome Provision and the Gestational Age Restrictions as “categorically unconstitutional” under Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). The questions presented are:

1. Whether Missouri’s restriction on abortions performed solely because the unborn child may have Down syndrome is categorically invalid under Casey and Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), or whether it is a valid, reasonable regulation of abortion that seeks to prevent the elimination of children with Down syndrome through eugenic abortion?

2. Whether Missouri’s restrictions on abortions performed after eight, fourteen, eighteen, and twenty weeks of gestational age are categorically invalid, or whether they are valid, reasonable regulations of abortion that advance important state interests?

3. Whether the “penumbral” right to abortion recognized in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and partially reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), should be overruled?