Latest news with #StephanieKraftSheley
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Missouri's New Fight to Roll Back Abortion Age Restrictions
In November, Missouri voters approved a ballot measure meant to end the state's total abortion ban (which made only very narrow exceptions for life-threatening emergencies), adding an amendment to the state's constitution that protected reproductive freedom, including the right to an abortion. The measure did not, however, automatically repeal the state's dozens of anti-abortion laws—including those that have long made it impossible for young people in Missouri to obtain an abortion in the state. The new reproductive freedom amendment places no age limit on whose abortion rights it is meant to protect. But even as the measure's backers brought challenges to numerous other abortion restrictions soon after Election Day, they did not challenge the two restrictions that effectively punish young people for seeking an abortion. A lawsuit filed today seeks to overturn two state anti-abortion restrictions for people under 18, based on the rights protected by the reproductive freedom amendment. Among states that have advanced abortion rights ballot measures, Missouri is not alone in leaving such laws unchallenged; in fact, it may be the first of those states where advocates have tried to overturn them. While many reproductive rights' groups have been eager to put abortion on the ballot, it seems there are still some abortion rights they are slow to defend. The group bringing the legal challenge, Right By You, is a free abortion-support text line that aims to be, for young people, 'basically in their pocket as a resource,' executive director Stephanie Kraft Sheley told me by phone this week. 'A young person is free to text us throughout their entire experience.' Sometimes, the text line might be that young person's only support. But Right By You is barred from providing funding for abortion and related costs. The group is prohibited from paying for or coordinating the travel, lodging, or childcare that abortion seekers might need in order to access care. Under Missouri's ban on helping minors obtain an abortion, a group like Right By You risks onerous fines, or being legally compelled to shut down by the state attorney general. Under the state's mandated parental involvement law, it could also be subject to criminal liability, according to the group's lawsuit, if it helps a minor obtain an abortion without parental consent. That law requires young people seeking an abortion to obtain consent from one parent or legal guardian, as well as notification from another, requirements that in practice prevent 'some young people from even seeking an abortion,' the legal challenge states. As volunteers at the text line regularly confront when explaining the laws to young people, the parental involvement law might result in delaying an abortion, which would in turn, because of the state's gestational ban, limit the abortion seeker's options for where they can get care and add 'medical risks, added expenses, and stress,' according to the complaint. And because the parental involvement law requires either parental consent or an exception granted by a judge, 'it coerces some young people to divulge intimate information to strangers because they are seeking abortion.' Together, these laws can put young people in even more precarious situations. What if a young person doesn't have a trusted parent or guardian and needs to go to a state with less restrictive laws for an abortion? Anyone who helps them do so could run afoul of the abortion support ban too. All that could be changing, owing to the new amendment protecting reproductive freedom in Missouri's state constitution. But making the promise of that amendment a reality also requires people to bring challenges such as this one. 'It takes bravery to bring these sorts of challenges,' said Rupali Sharma, co-director of litigation at The Lawyering Project and one of the attorneys representing Right By You. Right By You is seeking emergency relief in this case—meaning that the state could be immediately barred from enforcing these restrictions while the challenge proceeds in court. Young people in Missouri are experiencing 'irreparable harm,' Sharma said, and every day this law remains in effect, Right By You 'can't fulfill its mission, and its clients are suffering.' For young people, Right By You's legal challenge argues, the ban on abortion support and the parental involvement mandate 'deny, interfere with, delay, or otherwise restrict' their right to abortion, which is a violation of Missouri's new amendment. Though the ballot measure in Missouri bars the state from restricting abortion access up to the point of fetal viability—a legal limit drawn at the point a fetus is thought to be able to survive outside the womb, typically between 22 and 24 weeks—it has no age limit on those whose rights to abortion are protected. 'The text of the amendment is clear,' Sharma said. 'It doesn't leave young people out.' Critically, the amendment also protects people from being punished for obtaining an abortion and for helping someone obtain an abortion. That protection paves the way for these two challenges to abortion restrictions, the ban on abortion support and the parental involvement mandate, to proceed together. 'They obviously work together to humiliate young people, to burden young people,' Sharma said. 'They need to be understood together.' Parental involvement mandates are still quite common; more than half of states have a law on the books mandating parental notification and/or consent in minors' abortions. In recent years, some of these laws have been struck down, as Montana did in 2024, or repealed, as Illinois did in 2021, after a report by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU of Illinois found that the state's Parental Notice of Abortion Act 'undermines the safety, health, and dignity of young people.' Major medical organizations have also defended young patients' rights to independently choose to have an abortion, despite these laws. The American Academy of Pediatrics has taken the position that 'it is the adolescent's right to decide the outcome of their pregnancy and the people who should be involved.' The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has called for the repeal of mandatory parental involvement laws; the American Public Health Association has stated that minors should not be forced to involve their parents when deciding whether to have an abortion; and the American Medical Association has called on physicians to be mindful of legal obligations but also asserted that physicians should 'not feel or be compelled to require' minors to obtain consent of their parents' for abortion care. Even the laws' attempts to safeguard young people can function as another kind of barrier, if not a punishment. For young people who can't obtain consent from a parent or guardian, they can request a judicial bypass—to go before a judge and make the case for an exception. But to do so, a young person has to disclose information about their family, and about their pregnancy. It can be traumatizing, Sharma said. Young people are 'just so worried that if they said the wrong thing or wore the wrong thing or misunderstood what the judge was asking, the penalty of that would be having to remain pregnant.' Kraft Sheley likened what she has seen in judicial bypass hearings to a 'humiliation ritual.' On the text line, when a Right By You volunteer explains the judicial bypass process to an abortion seeker, she said, 'after hearing what it involves, going to court and explaining in a group full of adult strangers how they got pregnant, intimate details about their life, what their fears are based on their prior experiences of abuse, that's enough alone for some young people to say, I'm not doing that. And I'd rather stay pregnant even though I don't want to.' Though their state constitution now protects Missourians from being punished and burdened in this way, young people will only be protected if these laws are challenged. 'It's up to advocates to now bring challenges, in order to take advantage of what is possible under the amendment,' Kraft Sheley explained. So far, although Planned Parenthood and ACLU affiliates in Missouri swiftly challenged a number of anti-abortion laws since voters approved the reproductive freedom amendment, they have not challenged these two restrictions on young people's right to abortion. In other states where voters approved measures meant to protect abortion rights in state constitutions, as far as Kraft Sheley and Sharma know, there have not been subsequent challenges to parental involvement mandates or assistance bans. In Ohio, for example, where voters approved the Right to Make Reproductive Decisions Including Abortion Initiative in 2023, no one has yet challenged the state's restrictions for minors. 'This is not something we can change without more community support,' said the executive director of one Ohio Planned Parenthood affiliate in 2024. But in Missouri, Kraft Sheley is not willing to wait. Though she's glad that Right By You can bring this challenge and 'take that on,' she said, she is disappointed that more 'well-resourced organizations' chose not to: 'Young people were not prioritized. And it left us in the position of having to take it on ourselves.'
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Nonprofit sues to overturn Missouri's parental consent laws for minors seeking abortions
Stephanie Kraft Sheley, founder of Right By You, poses for a portrait in April 2025. Her organization is suing Missouri, arguing the state's parental consent laws for minors seeking abortions are unconstitutional (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent). A reproductive health care nonprofit filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to overturn Missouri's law requiring minors to get parental approval before getting an abortion. The lawsuit contends the consent law is unconstitutional after voters passed an abortion rights amendment last year. Right By You, a nonprofit that helps young people navigate pregnancy decisions, including by increasing access to and awareness around contraceptives, prenatal care, abortion, parenting and adoption, filed the lawsuit in Jackson County Circuit Court Missouri's parental consent law, which remains on the books, requires that a minor attempting to access abortion receive at least one parent's consent. The other parent must also be notified. If that's not possible, they can also seek out a judicial bypass process. Right By You is also challenging Missouri's ban on aiding or assisting a minor seeking an abortion. 'The laws bully pregnant young people without parental support into giving birth and threaten legal action against and undermine the core activities of Good Samaritans who seek to help young people effectuate their own decisions about their pregnancies with dignity,' the lawsuit reads. Missourians in November narrowly voted to enshrine the right to reproductive health care, including abortion, in the state constitution. That language, known during the election as Amendment 3, includes a provision that prohibits the government from discriminating 'against persons providing or obtaining reproductive health care or assisting another person in doing so.' The amendment does allow the government to legislate abortion access if compelling governmental interest exists. The current parental consent requirements and ban on assisting minors seeking an abortion 'enhance the information, guidance or support (young people) receive,' but does 'disregard, burden and punish young people's decision to end a pregnancy,' the lawsuit reads. Abortion returns to Columbia, opening access for mid-Missouri for first time since 2018 Stephanie Kraft Sheley, founder of Right By You, said most young people do involve a parent or trusted adult in conversations about abortion. It's those who can't whom she worries most about. 'It makes sense that folks that are in healthy relationships with their children have this instinct that they would want their children to come to them, but a law that forces that to happen in every case is not the solution to that problem, because it's not possible for a law to legislate a healthy family dynamic.' she said. The impact of the law, Kraft Sheley said, is 'not actually on the young person that you're imagining who has a good relationship with their parent, it's on a young person who's very safety and well being would be compromised by having this conversation with a parent.' Right By You is asking the court to strike down the parental consent law and to allow the group to begin funding and arranging logistics for minors seeking abortions, including transportation, hotel and child care costs. 'Young people are shooting this really narrow gap, and then they're navigating this obstacle course that's just traumatic and harmful and doesn't provide any corresponding benefit to them,' Kraft Sheley said. 'I see it play out with a lot of confusion, a lot of turmoil, and in some cases, I see young people not able to access care.' The state of Missouri and Attorney General Andrew Bailey are named as defendants in the lawsuit, as is the Jackson County prosecutor, who is being sued as a representative of the prosecutors across Missouri. A separate lawsuit challenging several of Missouri's other laws regulating abortion is also playing out in Jackson County. The day after the November election, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU of Missouri sued the same defendants on similar grounds, arguing current targeted regulation of abortion provider laws were unconstitutional under Amendment 3. A judge temporarily struck down most of the TRAP laws, allowing some abortions to resume in Missouri. The full trial is set for early 2026. Meanwhile, Bailey is also suing Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which oversees clinics in Kansas City and Columbia, over allegations that the organization is transporting minors out of state for abortions. The lawsuit is based on a video filmed more than a year ago at the Kansas City clinic. In the recording, a man secretly taped an interaction for Project Veritas in which he pretended to be the uncle of a 13-year-old in need of an abortion whose parents couldn't know. Planned Parenthood staff then directed him to their affiliate clinics in Kansas where they said he could 'bypass' parental consent. When the man asked how often girls go out of state for abortions, the Planned Parenthood employee said it happens 'every day.' During a court hearing on Monday in Cole County, attorneys for Planned Parenthood argued the lawsuit should be dropped on the grounds that the video was 'hypothetical' and that abortion is now legal. 'I find that the right to reproductive freedom initiative does not address the issue of parental consent,' Boone County Judge J. Hasbrouck Jacobs said Monday. 'And because of that, I'm going to deny the motion to dismiss.' Kraft Sheley is also a co-founder of What's Next, an Amendment 3 accountability group made up of organizers and activists who previously called for a constitutional amendment to appear on the Missouri ballot with no restrictions on abortion. Immediately after Amendment 3 was approved by voters, the coalition started calling on the state's major reproductive rights groups to challenge Missouri's parental consent law. 'They haven't done so,' Kraft Sheley said. 'And we can't sit and watch those people be left behind.' The lawsuit also notes that current policy does not clearly state how or if minors in state custody or in the foster care system can access abortion through the current parental consent law. A Missouri teen spent her life in foster care. Now she's fighting the state to keep her baby The Independent recently published a story detailing the journey of a young teenager in foster care who was denied an abortion in 2024 at the age of 15. After the state said abortion wasn't an option, she spent her pregnancy and postpartum in constant fear of the state removing her baby, despite providing her with practically no resources to help her parent. 'My fear is we'll see more cases like (this one,)' which Kraft Sheley described as 'my literal fear of what will become of young people who are forced to continue pregnancies. That's what is proposed by these criminal involvement laws, and that is what this constitutional amendment explicitly disallows.'
