Lawyers for Planned Parenthood have filed a four-pronged legal attack on an effort to ban most abortions in Missouri.
St.Louis school teacher Mary Hickey is the front person for the lawsuit that charges a proposed petition campaign is not honest with the voters and that the Secretary of State and the State auditor are aiding the circulation of a petition that could put an unconstitutional law on the books.
Planned Parenthood spokesman Michelle Trupiano acknowledges the Illinois-based Elliott Institute is exercising its legal right of petition. But she claims there’s no constitutional right to put unconstutional language in the law.
The lawsuit says the Secretary of State has wrtiten ballot title that supposedly defines the issue—that does not. In fact, she says, it misleads the public about what the proposed amendment would do.
The lawsuit also says the state auditor has under-estimated the potential cost of the proposal because it does not, among other things, estimate the thousands of dollars of taxpayers moneythe state will have to spend to defend the law in court—if the petition does go ahead…and if voters do adopt its proposal.
No date has been set for a hearing.
