…always thinking they can legislate their way out of having to follow federal law?

Um, folks, federal supersedes state.  If you learned nothing else from the voter-ID fiasco, you should have learned that.

What are the foam-flecked, goose-stepping rascals up to this time, you ask?  Well, they are trying to change the parameters of medically accepted definitions to classify emergency contraception, or the Morning After Pill as an abortive agent.  It isn’t.

The state legislature has spent a lot of time and energy since the GOP took over in 2000 toward trying to legislate a woman’s right to control her own body out of existence.  These are the folks who decided that a city bus driver who transported a teenage girl to an abortion appointment could, under certain but certainly not unusual circumstances, be prosecuted as an accessory.

Legislation presented to a House panel last week would classify emergency contraception as an abortion-inducing medication, contrary to the definition used by the Food and Drug Administration.

The bill also would protect pharmacies from lawsuits and from punishment by state regulators for refusing to sell or fill a prescription for any drug defined as triggering an abortion. Supporters said it would remove any financial incentive to sue the pharmacy’s owners for refusing to sell or stock an item that violated their conscience.

Opponents attacked the proposal as an unconstitutional restraint on reproductive freedom and an unconscionable affront to sexual assault victims. They said the bill would enshrine an inaccurate medical description in Missouri law, lead to increased numbers of abortions and leave millions of rural Missouri women without access to a safe and reliable form of birth control.

Filling prescriptions “is an essential function of your job,” said Pamela Sumners, executive director of the Missouri affiliate of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. “If you become a pharmacist, you should do your job.”

The bill applies specifically to two drugs: RU486, the early name for mifepristone, the drug administered in a doctor’s office to perform a nonsurgical abortion; and emergency contraception, which is marketed as Plan B.  (emphasis added)

A spokewoman for Missouri Right to life said that her group considers ec a form of abortion because in some instances it can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, and members of  her group believe that pregnancy gets underway the second the sperm hits the egg.  By the time of implantation “the human is long past the stage of being a so-called fertilized egg” she submitted in a written statement.  (All would do well to note that,   scientifically, that is exactly what it is.  A fertilized egg is to a fully formed human what a cookbook on the shelf is to a seven course meal.  It is the instructions.  There is a real live fully functioning, sentient, human female providing the building materials.  She shouldn’t just get a vote, she should have veto authority.)

The FDA notes that the morning after pill won’t work if the fertilized egg has already implanted in the uterus, pregnancy has begun, and the females body has begun the requisite endocrine support for a successful pregnancy.  

This is just another try by the paternalistic nitwits in the state lege to make an end run around the law and force their own version of morality and misogyny down the throats of the women in this state.