When Missouri voters will decide on November 5 whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, the Amendment 3 ballot measure will include a legal definition of fetal viability more strict than current state law. How Missouri defines fetal viability will be key to determining at what stage of pregnancy Missouri lawmakers can ban or restrict abortion.

Amendment 3 defines fetal viability as the point in pregnancy “when, in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional and based on the particular facts of the case, there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”

The KC Star asked CPB Bioethicist Terry Rosell about the definition of “extraordinary medical measures” and wrote:

Terry Rosell… said that as a non-clinician observer, the concept of “extraordinary medical measures” is a moving goal post, dependent on context involving personal values, technological developments and socioeconomics. What was once extraordinary a while ago may be ordinary today, he noted.

 Rosell said he reads the phrase within the context of Amendment 3 to mean viability is when a baby is expected to survive without requiring sustained medical interventions to support “basic cardiopulmonary functions, nutrition-hydration, and other life supports.” “Temporary use of any of those measures, perhaps over many weeks or even months, seems to me relatively ordinary in our NICU environments,” Rosell wrote in an email.

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