1. United States
2. Mo.
3. Letter

I am writing in opposition to SB1423 (Crawford), SB1089 (Nurrenbern), SB1016 (Lewis), HB2371 (Peters), SB979 (Schroer), and SB1402 (Coleman). While these bills appear to address distinct areas of health care policy, they are connected by a dangerous thread: they work in concert to restrict reproductive freedom and erode access to comprehensive, evidence-based care under the guise of other legislative aims. SB1402 creates a sales tax exemption for certain treatment devices. This provision might seem unrelated until you understand that it allows hospital-used medical equipment to be transferred to anti-abortion "pregnancy resource centers" without an official sales tax transaction. These centers are known for deceiving pregnant people with misleading medical information and actively blocking access to abortion. The equipment transfer helps these clinics appear legitimate while the state looks the other way, and because there is no official sale, there is no accountability for how the equipment is maintained or used. SB979 and SB1016 allow lesser-trained nurses to prescribe in specific categories while ensuring they will not be required to receive training in abortion care. This creates a tiered health care system where providers serving vulnerable populations are deliberately kept from developing skills that might include reproductive health services. SB1423 changes physician licensing requirements, allowing individuals with less comprehensive training to obtain licenses more easily. This weakens standards across the board and opens the door for providers who may lack the full range of competencies, including reproductive health training. It creates a pathway for ideologically motivated providers to enter practice without meeting the rigorous standards we should demand of all physicians. SB1089 and HB2371 mandate insurance coverage for home blood pressure monitoring devices for pregnant and postpartum women. This sounds like maternal health support, but it functions as a surveillance mechanism. Constant monitoring means pregnant people can be tracked in their own homes. This data could be used to monitor pregnancies and potentially create a paper trail that would enable bounty hunters or prosecutors to target individuals who end their pregnancies. In a post-Dobbs landscape, creating surveillance infrastructure around pregnant people is a direct threat to their autonomy and safety. Together these bills form a coordinated strategy: weaken provider standards, limit training in comprehensive care, funnel resources to anti-abortion clinics, and create surveillance systems that target pregnant people. This is not about improving health care quality or access. It is about controlling pregnant people and ensuring they cannot access the full spectrum of reproductive health services. I urge you to oppose all these bills.