Hey Missouri. It’s Me Again, AngryBlackLady. We Need to Talk About Your ‘Born Alive’ Bill.

So hey, Missouri. It’s me. AngryBlackLady. You probably knew I was coming.

I’ve been writing open letters to you since 2015. I’ve written five of these now, if you’re counting, which I am, because I have a spreadsheet, not to mention a deep and abiding sense of exhaustion. In 2015, I asked if you were drinking enough water because you kept introducing overlapping bills all designed to do one thing: end abortion in your state. 

To be honest, the seemingly endless attempts to strip Missourians of bodily autonomy was kind of obsessive. In 2019, I asked if you needed a wellness check. In 2025, I asked if you were engaging in any activities that spark joy besides ending abortion access for your own constituents. 

And now here we are again, and I’m starting to think we need to skip the wellness check and go straight to an intervention.

Missouri. (I can still call you that, right? After all, “Anti-choice Republicans in Missouri” is such a mouthful.) 

So, Missouri. Honey. Your voters passed Amendment 3 to protect abortion access in November 2024. They put the right to legal abortion up to the point of fetal viability directly into your state constitution. And how did you respond? By introducing a ballot initiative that would undo Amendment 3 in the hopes that Missouri voters didn’t actually say what they said when they enshrined legal abortion into the state constitution. 

Maybe they made an oopsie! Better send it back to the ballot box so voters can pinky swear that they actually want to be able to make decisions about their own bodies (up to a point). Voters will head to the ballot box again in November 2026 to let you know whether they really meant it. 

Not satisfied with that effort, you spent this legislative session trying to pass a “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,” and on May 13, 2026 you succeeded. I suppose I could congratulate you on your fortuitousness. This is, like, the fifth time you’ve tried to pass this bill. And you finally did it! So hooray, I guess.

But still. Have a seat. There are some things I need to explain to you about pregnancy, birth, health care, and human rights. Again.

Infanticide is already illegal 

The premise of every “born alive” bill ever introduced—and there have been dozens of them, Missouri, including yours—is that abortion providers are out here delivering live infants and then killing them. Just wantonly murdering newborns. In clinics. In hospitals. 

This is not happening. It has never happened. There is no epidemic. As NICU nurse Julia Pulver wrote for Rewire News Group in 2019 after President Donald Trump echoed the newborn-killing lie, “[t]here are no case studies of healthy, uncomplicated pregnancies being carried to term, to then have an elective abortion in the delivery room.”

In 2013, RNG sent Freedom of Information Act requests to all 50 state attorneys general asking for criminal prosecutions related to infants born alive after abortion. We got responses from 38 AGs. Not one—not one—provided evidence of a single prosecution for delivering and then killing a viable fetus after an abortion. Zero. 

And things haven’t changed since then. There’s still no epidemic, no pattern of cases of hospitals and clinics killing live babies. But, dear Missouri, you passed another “born alive” bill, anyway.

Also, I don’t know if you know this, but it’s already illegal to murder infants. I know—weird, right? There’s even a word for it: infanticide. Infanticide was already illegal before George W. Bush signed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002, which granted full legal personhood to any infant born alive after an abortion attempt. That law has been on the books for more than 20 years.

So why do you need a new law? The answer is, you don’t. But just for fun, let’s take a look at why you think you do. 

The Missouri Independent reported that the bill’s sponsor, Missouri state Sen. Brad Hudson, claimed that 2002 federal law “doesn’t go far enough” because it doesn’t explicitly say that proper medical care must be given. What kind of care is that? According to your legislation, care that a “reasonably diligent and conscientious physician would render.” 

And what does that mean? It’s intentionally vague.

But in practice it means that should a provider find themselves on the business end of a prosecution for murder because the state decided they didn’t provide “reasonable care,” the only experts that the state will put on the stand are those who think that the “reasonable and conscientious” standard is to do whatever it takes to save the life of the newborn. Even if that’s not what the parents want. Even if the parents have chosen palliative care due to a fatal genetic disorder, heart problem, or other life-limiting condition. 

That’s what Hudson is advocating for: ignoring the wishes of parents who don’t want doctors pounding on the chest and breaking the ribs of a newborn who has only a few minutes to live, or shoving tubes down their throat. 

Hudson’s colleague Rep. Brian Seitz—whom I cannot thank enough for this quote—went further. 

“In federal law, they’re not provided health care,” he said during a House debate. “In Missouri law we will give that infant a chance. I’d buy that infant a house. I think that infant should be given an award.”

Missouri? You already can’t put food on the table of Missouri children—nearly 20 percent of children under the age of five live below the federal poverty line, according to the non-profit Empower Missouri—but you’re gonna buy infants houses? Are you also going to supply these infants with housekeepers as well? Infants famously are excellent at vacuuming, so you can maybe spare yourself that expense. 

Grasping at political straws

Here’s what’s really going on. 

Your voters enshrined abortion rights in your constitution in 2024, and that is super awkward for you. So in addition to trying to re-ban abortion this November, you’re also making it so legally terrifying to provide abortion care that doctors stop doing it, or stop coming to Missouri altogether. 

Your new “born alive” bill turns doctors working through catastrophic pregnancy outcomes into potential homicide suspects. Multiple OB-GYNs testified against this legislation, saying it would force doctors to consult with hospital lawyers before treating patients in complicated pregnancy situations. Who wants to work under those conditions?

Turns out, quite a few don’t. Missouri already saw a 25 percent drop in OB-GYN residency applicants after Dobbs, the 2022 case that overturned Roe v. Wade. How can a Missourian get an abortion if there are no doctors? Checkmate, libs. 

And then there’s the electoral piece, which is not subtle. “Born alive” bills exist to paint Democrats as pro-infanticide. Trump has repeatedly claimed, for years, that Democrats wanted to “execute babies after birth.”

And if Democrats are trying to explain that no, actually, we don’t want to execute babies after birth, then they’re already losing. So again, checkmate, libs.

But in the end, it was the Missouri libs who owned you. 

Democrats only hold one-third of seats in the state senate, but they put the squeeze to you: They threatened to filibuster the “born-alive” bill unless you negotiated. 

And you negotiated your way into a terrible bill. Democrats made you strip provisions that would have opened the door to civil lawsuits over medication abortion. They made you add a maternal mortality review board and work to identify maternity care deserts in the state. 

Hell, the bill requires you to investigate and make recommendations on how to reduce racial inequities in maternal deaths. Racial inequities? My word, Missouri. Have you gone woke?

Democrats didn’t stop there. They added cyberstalking and cyberharassment protections to the bill. And then—here’s the good part—they included a “nonseverability” clause, meaning that if any part of this bill is struck down in court, the whole legislation falls. 

And there are constitutional problems with this bill, too. One of them, as noted by State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman is that bills can’t be about more than one thing in Missouri. Coleman is a Republican who never met an abortion restriction she didn’t like. But she voted against this legislation, because it’s got way too much going on. 

Democrats were so savvy that even Sam Lee—the longtime anti-abortion lobbyist with Campaign Life Missouri who helped draft earlier versions of the “born alive” bill—recently pulled his support for the bill, calling the nonseverability clause a “poison pill.” 

So now the bill is on its way to the governor’s desk for signing, with fractured Republican support. Maybe it’s time to accept that even Republican voters in Missouri don’t want Republicans all up in their birthing business. Just a thought. 

In any event, I wish I could stop writing these letters, Missouri, but I can’t because you’re always on your bullshit.

So Missouri? Let’s get you to bed. You’re clearly exhausted. You invented a newborn, promised to buy it a house, then used it to threaten doctors.

Buy that infant a house. Great idea, my guy.

Your friend (reluctantly),
AngryBlackLady

Update (May 27, 2026): The dek, or summary, of this story has been updated for clarity.

The post Hey Missouri. It’s Me Again, AngryBlackLady. We Need to Talk About Your ‘Born Alive’ Bill. appeared first on Rewire News Group.