Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator.
The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site: http://revisor.mo.gov/.
You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.
The 2023 Regular Session (102nd General Assembly, 1st Regular Session) convenes on Wednesday, January 4, 2023, and will end on Friday, May 12, 2023. So far there are 474 proposed House Bills prefiled for the session. You can see these HBs by clicking here; and so far there are 373 proposed Senate Bills prefiled for the session, listed here.
If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.
Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.
We Urge You To Contact Your Legislators To Express Your Own Viewpoints
We’d like to describe some bills about which we’d particularly like you to contact your legislators. Please write, call or visit to express your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each bill can be found on the House and Senate Joint Bill Tracking site. Just put the bill number into the search box (e.g. SB123 or HB123).
Very Very Bad Bills
HB146 (Sponsor: Representative Jo Doll, Democrat, District 91 – St. Louis)
This bill requires health care professionals that provide maternity health care services to screen for mental disorders and mental illnesses in all pregnant women as early as possible at the onset of prenatal care and throughout the pregnancy. Any pregnant woman found to have a mental disorder or mental illness shall be referred for treatment.
This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services to vulnerable women. Mental health screening based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) not only is the means by which psychiatrists drum up new business, but also is a major threat to the civil liberties and freedoms of all those in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Mental health screening aims to get whole populations on drugs and thus under control. Patients with actual physical conditions (such as pregnancy) are routinely misdiagnosed with psychiatric disorders, then drugged or institutionalized. Numerous studies show that untreated physical problems can cause behavioral and emotional problems, not to mention the many problems caused by adverse reactions (side effects) to psychiatric drugs.
HB378 (Sponsor: Representative Crystal Quade, Democrat, District 132 – Greene County)
This bill directs the Department of Mental Health to establish a grant program for nonprofits to set up behavioral crisis centers to deliver mental health treatment in an emergency; where “behavioral crisis” means any instance in which a person’s behavior makes the person a danger to himself or herself or others or prevents the person from functioning effectively in the community.
By their own admission psychiatrists cannot predict a person’s dangerousness or violence. The popular refrain that psychiatry can determine if a person is a danger to self or others is a complete fraud.
No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, anxiety or panic. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatric drugs and psychiatric treatments are not workable.
SB122 (Sponsor: Senator Karla May, Democrat, District 4 – St. Louis)
This bill provides that a child may be excused from attendance at school if the child is unable to attend school due to mental or behavioral health concerns, provided that the school receives documentation from a mental health professional.
This is a bald attempt to funnel vulnerable children into the mental health system, where they can be drugged with violence-causing psychotropic drugs.
Claiming that even normal childhood behavior is a mental disorder and that drugs are the solution, psychiatrists and psychologists have insinuated themselves into positions of authority over children. Through a virtual coup d’etat in our schools, our once strong and effective scholastic-based schools have turned into explosive test tubes.
Psychiatrists and psychologists have invaded our once successful education systems and converted them into behavioral laboratories. The entirety of psychological and psychiatric programs for children are founded on the tacit assumptions that mental health “experts” know all about the mind and mental phenomena, know a better way of life, a better value system and how to improve the lives of children beyond the understanding and capability of not only parents, but everyone else in society.
The reality is that all child mental health programs are designed to control the lives of children towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of not only the children’s sanity and well-being, but also that of their parents and of society itself.
The antidote to a child’s “behavioral health concerns” is academics and literacy, not removing them from school on the condition they are in psychiatric treatment.
Very Good Bills
SB158 (Sponsor: Senator Nick Schroer, Republican, District 2 – St. Charles County)
This bill establishes “The Parents’ Bill of Rights for Student Well-Being” which lists rights for parents relating to education, health care, and mental health. The act prohibits public schools and school districts from infringing on the rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, or mental health of such parent’s minor child without first demonstrating that the infringement is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest and such interest cannot be otherwise served by a less restrictive means.
No one but their parents should be determining the mental health care for a child.
SJR29 (Senate Joint Resolution 29, Sponsor: Senator Jill Carter, Republican, District 32 – Jasper and Newton counties)
This proposed constitutional amendment would provide that every parent has a fundamental right to exercise exclusive control over all aspects of their minor children’s lives without governmental interference, including, but not limited to, decisions regarding their minor children’s custody, upbringing, education, religious instruction, discipline, physical and mental health care, and place of habitation. Read the bill summary for the full list of rights.
No one but their parents should be determining the mental health care for a child.
