JEFFERSON CITY - Jay Nixon’s very public pro-abortion bias requires that he recuse himself from a lawsuit filed this week by abortion provider Planned Parenthood challenging a ballot measure that would make it an act of "medical negligence" to perform or refer a person for an abortion without first determining if it is needed to prevent death or serious injury.

“Jay Nixon has publicly admitted that his pro-abortion positions constitute a conflict of interest when it comes to defending the unborn in Missouri so he should immediately recuse himself from this measure and stop playing politics with the lives of innocent Missourians,” said Paul Sloca, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party. “If Jay Nixon refuses to recuse himself then he will be betraying the majority of Missourians that oppose abortion.”

In 1999 and under pressure from pro-life lawmakers, Nixon turned over the defense of a new state ban against Planned Parenthood from receiving state funds to outside attorney Jordan Cherrick because, in Nixon’s own words to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “‘I’m pro-choice, I have a conflict’ of interest.” Despite those statements, Nixon refused earlier this year recuse himself from defending pro-life legislation even after he was fired by the Department of Health and Senior Services because of his pro-abortion bias.

Nixon’s failures on behalf of the unborn began in 1996 after a federal judge overruled a restriction which prevented state funding from going to Planned Parenthood. Shortly after the ruling, Nixon said he was not convinced the state could “discriminate” when allocating family planning funds, and he claimed Planned Parenthood may have been unfairly singled out.  He then decided against appealing the decision.

A year later, the Legislature passed another bill to ban state funding for Planned Parenthood. In an attempt to sabotage the legislation, Nixon went back to the same federal judge who had rejected the previous legislation to consider the 1997 ban, and once again the judge sided with Planned Parenthood. Angry pro-life legislators later accused Nixon of torpedoing the legislation but their attempts to remove him from the case failed.