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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMissouri Could Soon Become First State Without A Clinic That Performs Abortions
Missouri is within days of losing its last remaining health center that provides abortions. Unless a court intervenes, it will become the first state in the nation without such a clinic.
Planned Parenthood officials say they are filing a lawsuit in state court Tuesday, asking for a restraining order to prevent its St. Louis clinic from being forced to stop offering the procedure after a state license expires on Friday.
Planned Parenthood officials say they've been unable to reach an agreement with officials at the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, who want to require several doctors who perform abortions at the health center to submit to questioning as a condition of renewing the license.
"This means that more than 1.1 million women of reproductive age in Missouri will live in a state where they cannot receive the health care they need," Planned Parenthood President, Dr. Leana Wen, said in a statement to NPR. "This is a world we haven't seen in nearly half a century."
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/28/727323584/missouri-could-soon-become-first-state-without-a-clinic-that-performs-abortions?
Laffy Kat
(16,356 posts)nocoincidences
(2,195 posts)it did this, because of the loss of business from boycotting, the loss of reputation as a good place to live, and the loss of countless other things they did not bother to figure out.
Simultaneously, the state right across the river from them is enacting the most liberal pro-choice laws in the country.
I predict a lucrative new industry moving women across the Big River with speed and comfort and depositing them directly at the doorstep of the new clinics sprouting up in towns along the river on the Illinois side.
nocoincidences
(2,195 posts)Here it comes....
GRANITE CITY, ILLINOIS ― The phone did not stop ringing all day at Hope Clinic for Women, an abortion clinic in Illinois located just over the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri.
The callers wanted to know: Was abortion still legal? Could they please come in for an appointment? And how soon?
People are frantic because they dont understand whats happening, said Erin King, an OB-GYN and the executive director of Hope Clinic for Women. Theyre panicked. You can hear their stress level.
In Missouri, the only remaining abortion clinic is expected to shutter its doors at the end of the week, handing the anti-abortion movement a victory of epic proportions. For the first time since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, Missouri will become the only state in the U.S. where women cannot access legal abortions.
And so Hope Clinic, positioned across state lines but just 10 minutes from downtown St. Louis, was bracing for an influx of patients.
Already, more than 50 percent of the women the clinic serves come from Missouri. Many travel to Illinois to circumvent Missouris onerous regulations, which can be both costly and emotionally taxing. In Missouri, a woman who wants an abortion must travel to the one remaining clinic, provide informed consent, wait 72 hours before her procedure, and undergo a pelvic exam even if she is having a medication abortion. That last requirement is at odds with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which says the decision should be left up to the provider.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/missouri-last-abortion-clinic-closed-patients_n_5cefddc2e4b00cfa19673890