Full federal appeals court to consider Missouri abortion law

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — A full federal appeals court has decided to rehear a case over a sweeping Missouri abortion law that would ban the procedures at or around the eighth week of a pregnancy.

The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals last week decided to take up the case on its own motion.

At issue is a 2019 state law that would ban abortions as early as eight weeks into a pregnancy and prohibit abortions based on a Down syndrome diagnosis.

A three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court last month upheld an injunction from U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs prohibiting Missouri from enforcing the provisions. But the full appeals court will now consider the case.

“We have long said the fight to protect abortion access in Missouri is far from over," Yamelsie Rodríguez, president and CEO of Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, said in a statement. “The Eighth Circuit’s sudden change to reconsider Missouri’s sweeping abortion ban — one the court said was unconstitutional — is just another troubling signal in a long line of threats to our reproductive freedom.”

A spokesman for the Missouri attorney general's office, which is defending the law, didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.

Sachs said when he ruled last year that he thought Planned Parenthood and the ACLU would likely succeed in their lawsuit challenging the law as unconstitutional. Similar laws have been struck down in North Dakota and Iowa.

Legislators who helped draft the Missouri law had said it was meant to withstand court challenges instead of spark them. It included a provision stating that if the eight-week ban was struck down, then a series of less-restrictive abortion limits would kick in at 14, 18 or 20 weeks. But courts have blocked enforcement of all of those...