State Rep. Bob Onder, who has emphasized his support for tougher abortion restrictions during his campaign for the Republican 9th District U.S. House nomination, is shrugging off his failure to win the backing of the state’s main anti-abortion group - Missouri Right to Life.

“My pro-life record speaks for itself,” the Lake Saint Louis lawmaker said in an interview before his debate Tuesday night in nearby Wentzville on the issue with abortion rights supporter Ken Jacob of Columbia, one of four Democrats running for the same seat.

Onder said he’d been a “pro-life activist” since he was in college and noted that he had headed a group that led the fight against a state constitutional amendment protecting embryonic stem-cell research approved by voters in 2006.

He also pointed out that he sponsored “the major pro-life bill” of this year’s session of the Legislature – a measure that would have strengthened the state’s 24-hour waiting period for abortions and made a crime of coercing a woman to have an abortion. Onder on Monday also said he’d push for a federal 24-hour waiting period law if he’s elected to Congress.

Patty Skain, executive director of Missouri Right to Life, said in a telephone interview that the group endorsed former state Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of St. Elizabeth over Onder and another anti-abortion Republican, state Rep. Danie Moore of Fulton, in part because the latter two voted last year for a bill that the group feared could lead to state money going to embryonic stem-cell research.

The measure allows the state to use assets from the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, also known as MOHELA, for various college construction projects.

Onder, along with many other anti-abortion House members, disagreed with the group’s position. They pointed out that the bill previously had been stripped of all human biotechnology research projects originally sought by Gov. Matt Blunt.

 “Therefore, the opinion of most of us was that there were no life issue concerns with MOHELA at all,” Onder said.

Skain said Right to Life worries that some of the money still could ultimately be channeled to such projects. Luetkemeyer, who was no longer in the Legislature at the time of the vote, said Tuesday he probably would have sided with Skain’s group on the issue had he been in office then although he hasn’t researched it in detail.

No mention of the endorsement was made during the Onder-Jacob debate, which ran about an hour and a half, at Wentzville’s Holiday Inn. About 100 people attended, many of them Onder supporters – a fact that led Jacob, a former state senator, to remark early on in the event on his appearance in “enemy territory.”

Onder’s state House district takes in part of western St. Charles County, a staunchly Republican area. The two squared off in a similar event in Columbia last month.

The two, while differing strongly on abortion, said they lined up the two debates to offer a type of detailed substantive discourse too often obscured by modern-day campaigns dominated by sound bites and TV ads.

Some of the debate was over Onder’s Jefferson City bill, which was approved by the House but died in the Senate.

Among other things, the measure would have required physicians performing an abortion to provide medically accurate information on risks, alternatives and follow-up care and to provide the woman with the opportunity to view an ultrasound of the fetus.

“My bill was a common-sense attempt to make sure women before they make that momentous decision….are fully informed and they are not coerced to have an abortion,” Onder said.

He also alleged that the process mandated by the state’s current informed consent law is “a joke” and isn’t adhered to carefully by abortion providers.

Jacob called Onder’s bill “nothing more than a lawsuit” and part of a strategy by anti-abortion groups to tie up abortion rights organizations in lengthy litigation and “to wear them out of their resources.”

Jacob also questioned provisions that would require a physician to provide a woman seeking an abortion with printed or video materials from the state Department of Health and Senior Services on anatomical and physiological characteristics of the unborn child and other matters.

He said the health department’s view on what is factual and unbiased could vary as governors and their administrations change.

He said such discussions should be between a woman and her physician “and not the government intruding on that” with rules on what should be said.

Onder said that unbiased information could be crafted and that when scientific studies differ on some aspects women could be told about those varying views.

Onder said incremental laws restricting abortions enacted in various states “do in fact save lives” - which drew applause from his backers in the audience.

Jacob said he wished people on both sides of the issue could agree on efforts to prevent unwanted pregnancies, which he said is his ultimate goal.

But, he said, he believed the final decision on abortion should be up to the woman. “I can’t see how a woman can be free without control of her own body,” he said.