Governor Greitens calls for Special Session on pro-life policies
State lawmakers are meeting in Jefferson City again Monday for a second special legislative session.
In an announcement made via Twitter on Wednesday, Gov. Eric Greitens called for a Special Session on pro-life policies. The governor said it was primarily in response to a recent law passed in St. Louis.
ABC 17 News sat down with the Governor Wednesday to find out why he called another session less than two weeks after lawmakers wrapped up the first on a steel mill bill.
“This special session does two things,” Greitens said. “First it protects pregnancy care centers. … The other thing that we’re doing is we’re proposing some common sense health and safety standards for the people of Missouri.”
ABC 17 News has reported that special sessions are estimated to cost taxpayers anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 a week for the State House and another $28,000 for the State Senate.
But the governor said work on the issues cannot wait.
He said that is because of a new St. Louis law that could make it illegal for an organization to only hire pro-life workers.
The law bans employers from hiring or firing a woman because she has had a previous abortion, takes birth control or becomes pregnant while not married.
“It’s important for us to do now, to take this action now, again because these actions were just taken in St. Louis,” Greitens said. “Now look, the senate had a chance to act on this during the session, they failed to and that’s why I’m calling them back to make sure that they do their job.”
The governor also hopes to enact regulations for abortion clinics including yearly safety inspections.
National Abortion Rights Action League, also known as NARAL, reasoned to the Governor’s announcement Wednesday, saying in part, “The intent behind the governor’s actions is to shame women for their personal medical decision and make basic reproductive health care harder to access.”
House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty also criticized the announcement saying, “Special sessions are supposed to be called only for extraordinary occasions when immediate action is necessary. The governor’s failure to enact his agenda during the regular session falls well short of that high standard.”
ABC 17 News asked Gov. Greitens if he has plans to call any more special sessions once work on these issues are done, such as addressing the growing opioid epidemic or additional political ethics reform.
The governor said no options are off the table.
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/EricGreitens/status/872524855111020545″,”author_name”:”Eric Greitens”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/EricGreitens”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;I’m proud to support life–the lives of mothers, their children, and the innocent unborn. WATCH our call for a pro-life special session. &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/kELtCNrdKC”&#gt;pic.twitter.com/kELtCNrdKC&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Eric Greitens (@EricGreitens) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/EricGreitens/status/872524855111020545″&#gt;June 7, 2017&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
