Missouri Amendment 3 on abortion is too broad and vague. Vote no on Nov. 5 | Opinion

How long will we perpetuate the myth of abortion as health care? In what other instance do we suppress, impede, and interrupt the normal functioning of a healthy bodily system and call it health care? We don’t help young women to regurgitate their food and call it “digestive health care.”

Even ignoring the fact that abortion is the opposite of reproductive health care, a brief reading of Missouri Amendment 3 (which is all the less-than-one-page-long document requires) should instantly set off warning bells.

First, Section 4 of Amendment 3 supposedly gives permission to the state to regulate abortion after fetal viability. Not only is fetal viability open to multiple interpretations even within the amendment (see the first item in Section 8), but this permission to regulate the termination of viable unborn babies would be immediately nullified if “in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional (an abortion) is needed to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.” Since mental health is inherently subjective, this is equivalent to unrestricted abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. There is no other way to interpret it.

Moreover, the notion that a “good faith judgment” about a mother’s physical or mental health can be impartially obtained from a health care professional financially invested in providing abortions (such as Planned Parenthood) is farcical. It is an obvious and egregious conflict of interest for a person who makes a living selling abortions to decide who needs one.

Second, Section 5 of Amendment 3 would give immunity from penalty or prosecution to “any person assisting a person in exercising their right to reproductive freedom with that person’s consent.” Any person? Boyfriends, best friends, parents, whoever would be able to assist a mother to obtain an abortion with zero consequences? Moreover, the amendment does not define what “assist” means. Get out the coat hangers, everyone. We just moved the back alley into the front yard.

Third, “health care professional” is never defined in Amendment 3. That designation can legally include nurses, dentists, dental hygienists, optometrists, pharmacists and podiatrists, not to mention mental health professionals. So it is not unreasonable to fear that under Amendment 3 such people would qualify to perform abortions. And, according to Section 5, none of them would be liable to prosecution should they botch the job or be unable to provide appropriate follow-up care.

Amendment 3 is sweepingly broad, incredibly vague, and dangerous to women. It constitutionalizes a so-called right without providing any safeguards whatsoever in its exercise. If we truly want to protect women’s health, let us not put them at the mercy of any person immune from all consequences.