(Missourinet) – The Missouri Senate has passed abortion legislation to close out a special session of the state legislature.

Republican Governor Eric Greitens initially called the session in early June to respond to a court decision tossing out two Missouri laws. One required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, and the other called for abortion clinics to have hospital-type standards for outpatient care.

The special session began in the Senate, which approved a plan to stiffen regulations on abortion providers in mid-June. Its bill was then taken up by the House, which passed even tougher legislation.

The Senate Tuesday took roughly three hours to affirm the lower chamber’s plan with no changes. The final vote was 22-9.

The Senate spent the majority of its surprisingly short floor session debating whether to take up the bill, or request a conference with the House to hash out differences between the two bodies.

The conference motion came from Democrat Jason Holsman of Kansas City, who outright opposes the abortion legislation, but found the Senate version less severe.

Holsman, at one point, accused Republican Bob Onder of Lake Saint Louis of pressuring fellow GOP members to embrace the tougher House legislation by citing pro-life groups (such as Right to Life) that rate lawmakers based on their votes.

“I didn’t get the memo that the pro-life special interest groups were now in charge of the Missouri Senate,” Holsman said.

At least three Republicans (Bob Dixon of Springfield, Ryan Silvey of Kansas City and Rob Schaaf of St. Joseph) voted to go to committee over concerns about enhanced power the House version granted to the attorney general to intervene in local abortion court cases.

Unease over the provision was brought up Monday, when the Senate broke a near month long delay in activity by gaveling in to address the abortion bill. Silvey and Schaaf mentioned that the attorney general authority was unconstitutional.

Bill sponsor Andrew Koenig (R-Manchester) indicated Monday he wouldn’t move to send the bill to committee.

Democrats, who favored going to committee, forced the Republican super-majority to use a procedural maneuver to bring the legislation to a vote Tuesday. Members of the minority party continually complained that the Senate was backtracking on positions it had taken in the original bill it crafted.

Democrat Jill Schupp of Creve Coeur, who worked on the original Senate version during marathon negotiations in June said Republicans went back on their word.

“I believe that in the Senate, your word is your bond,” Schupp said. “I believed that there was integrity. Now I feel…I don’t know how we go forward. I don’t know how we trust each other. And that is a big blow to what I believe was what the Senate had to offer.”

Changes made by the House that were embraced by the Senate Tuesday included a more robust definition of abortion clinics, which include separate regulations from other medical centers.

It requires clinics to submit to unannounced annual inspections and have plans for possible complications arising from RU486 (the abortion pill). It forbids clinic workers from interfering with EMS personnel performing their duties, or instructing ambulance drivers to not use lights and sirens.

The measure has whistleblower protections for clinic employees, and requires abortion doctors to meet with their patients 72-hours in advance of the procedure to explain its risks.

The Senate spent little time on a portion of the legislation championed by House Republican Diane Franklin of Camdenton, which sets strict requirements for tracking fetal tissue after abortions. The provision is meant to prevent trafficking of fetal tissue.

Another portion of the bill is meant to protect non-abortion performing pregnancy centers from an ordinance in St. Louis which prohibits discrimination based on reproductive decisions and use of birth control. Senator Onder noted it doesn’t dismantle the ordinance, but does shield the centers from having to participate in abortions.

“Pregnancy care centers can’t be forced to hire someone who doesn’t share their mission of offering an alternative to women,” Onder said. “But it did not repeal all of the ordinance. Some of the other so-called reproductive health decision protections, those remain in place.”

The Archbishop of St. Louis released a statement, noting that because the legislation failed to eliminate the ordinance, its  lawsuit against the city will “continue.”

While most Republicans were happy with the measure, Onder acknowledged it didn’t replace the strict abortion restrictions discarded by the federal judge in May.

“We’re not reinstating Missouri law prior to May 2nd,” Onder said. “What we’re doing is making sure that there is regulatory authority of the Department of Health to protect the safety of women.”

One Republican, Ryan Silvey, joined all eight Democrats present in voting against the bill. Silvey said the enhancement to the attorney general’s authority clashed with his values as a conservative.

“It is centralization of power and it’s not a conservative principle.  We are not for, as conservatives, centralization of power.”

The bill now goes to Governor Greitens desk.

(Missourinet) – A showdown between labor and business interests heads to a Missouri appeals court Wednesday.

After Governor Eric Greitens signed a right to work bill into law in January, unions quickly began drafting a plan to get the law placed before a public vote.

Citizens have the ability to repeal legislation in Missouri through veto referendums. Organized labor, working through the AFL-CIO, submitted paperwork for such a process to the Secretary of State’s office earlier in the year.

Secretary Jay Ashcroft then wrote a summary to capsulize the intention of the referendum, which had to be cleared by other departments, including the state auditor and attorney general. After Ashcroft ultimately approved the referendum for circulation as a ballot initiative, unions began collecting signatures.

A lawsuit challenging the wording of the summary was filed in April. Attorneys representing two Kansas City police officers and a nurse from Liberty claimed its language contained “embarrassing” grammatical errors and was unfair and inadequate.

On June 22nd, Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green agreed, ruling the right-to-work summary could be confusing to voters. Green rewrote the summary in a way he called “fair, sufficient, and informative to voters.”

In his ruling, Green instructed Secretary Ashcroft to “immediately certify the corrected summary statement as part of the official ballot title.” Instead, Ashcroft appealed Green’s decision, with the AFL-CIO joining in.

Republican state lawmakers, along with groups such as the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, have launched an informal campaign to defend the right to work law.

Senator Caleb Rowden of Columbia is among the GOP members who have offered to speak out. He said he doesn’t think the law needs to go before voters because their views are already represented by the lawmakers they elected.

“When you vote for individuals, you vote for the policies that they represent,” Rowden said. “I think we set a dangerous precedent when every time the legislature does something that maybe a somewhat small, but vocal group of folks from in the state, and a lot from out of state, decide they want to change that, I think that’s a pretty dangerous road to go down.”

Republicans rocketed a right to work bill through the legislature this year, knowing a like-minded GOP governor would quickly sign it into law. They’d been frustrated in previous attempts when Democratic heads of state, notably Jay Nixon in 2015, vetoed their legislation.

Rowden said supporters of right to work are taking protective measures to promote the law should it go before voters.

“I think the point of what we’re doing is, if the opposition gets the signatures and it goes on the ballot, we want to make sure that people know why it’s good public policy,” Rowden said.

A three judge panel at the Western District Court of Appeals in Kansas City will hear arguments Wednesday afternoon. AFL-CIO Missouri President Mike Louis thinks the lower court judge turned the voting process upside-down in his rewrite of the summary.

“Judge Green changed it in such a way that he changed how you would vote, which is going to confuse the voters,” Louis said. “They have to vote yes, to tell the government no.”

Lawsuits over language in ballot measures is not unusual in Missouri. In this case, Louis said changes made by the judge could be premeditated to confound voters.

“Judge Green and the people who came from out of state, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and the National Right to Work Committee lawyers who came here to argue the case, purposely submitted their side of the story in an attempt to confuse voters,” Louis said.

Workers who are collecting signatures for the ballot referendum must have copies of the full text of the measure and the summary attached to signature pages. The summaries presented to people being asked to sign the petitions include the same language originally approved by Secretary of State Ashcroft.

To change the wording, he would have to sign off on the rewrite from circuit court Judge Green.  Ashcroft, a Republican, would be unlikely to approve the rewrite as he’s appealing to have it thrown out.

Louis said some union opponents have tried to interfere with the signature gathering process.

“We’ve had some attempts by people to confuse voters and try to process a sign-off sheet that wasn’t the real thing, to trick people into believing that they had already signed, and they hadn’t,” Louis said.

Despite any shenanigans Louis suspects from the opposing side, he claims the unions are meeting their goals for signatures collected and are on target to meet the required totals by the August 28th deadline.

To satisfy those totals, the unions must have their petitions signed by five percent of legal voters in the last governor’s election in any six of the eight congressional districts in Missouri. The actual number of signatures required is in the range of 100,000, depending on which districts are chosen.

Rowden, the Senate Republican, said lawmakers and groups supporting the right to work law want to inform the public of their commitment to it.

“What we are attempting to do is make sure that folks know the benefits of right to work, and that it’s pro worker, pro economic development policy, that a vast majority of people in Jefferson City support,” Rowden said.

The right to work law is set to go into effect August 28th, the same day the unions must have their signatures gathered and submitted to the Secretary of State’s office. If enough of the signatures collected are deemed valid, the law will be delayed until the public vote is held on the ballot referendum in 2018.