Those liberal wimps down in the Texas Legislature apparently don't know how to write an anti-abortion law. The recent Texas ban on abortions, which gave anyone the right to sue those in Texas who aid in providing an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, left a giant door open for Texas women to get abortions by leaving the state. Now, a very persistent Missouri lawmaker wants to close that door here with legislation that would basically mirror the Texas law - but would also authorize lawsuits against anyone outside the state who assists with an abortion involving a pregnant Missouri woman.

The legislation by state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, R-Arnold, would effectively tell Missouri women that anywhere they go to seek abortion services that are declared illegal in Missouri - over the border into Illinois, for example - the long arm of Missouri's draconian laws will follow them, threatening monetary damages against doctors, hotline workers and anyone else who helps them, anywhere in the country.

"If your neighboring state doesn't have pro-life protections, it minimizes the ability to protect the unborn in your state," Coleman told The Washington Post. She is apparently oblivious to the constitutional fact that, in a federal republic, that's how it works: States can enforce their own laws within their own borders (to the extent they don't conflict with federal law), but they emphatically cannot reach over and enforce their own laws in another state just because one of their citizens has traveled there.

Put another way: How would Coleman and her fellow Missouri Republicans react if Illinois, which has more stringent gun restrictions than Missouri does, decided it had the authority to reach into Missouri and enforce its own gun laws any time an Illinois resident traveled here? We're guessing they wouldn't react well.

In addition to sounding like some Orwellian construct from the old Soviet Union, the notion that anyone who happens to reside in Missouri should be forever under the glowering eye of this state and its policies no matter where they might travel is unconstitutional on its face.

It's tempting to dismiss such a bizarre proposition as press-release fodder rather than serious legislation — except that Missouri's ruling Republicans have already gone down the equally unconstitutional rabbit hole of declaring federal gun laws null and void here, inviting a federal lawsuit that the state will inevitably lose. Constitutional fidelity, it seems, means absolutely nothing to these extremist ideologues.

Coleman's bill is so beyond the constitutional pale that even today's conservative Supreme Court would almost certainly strike it down if it ever got that far. But it should nonetheless serve as a warning: With Roe v. Wade facing possible reversal, red states like Missouri will have more power to limit women's autonomy within their own borders. And some of them have no intention of stopping there.

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