Planned Parenthood is asking a Kansas City judge to reconsider an order that left some abortion restrictions in place after she temporarily struck down a Missouri ban on the procedure.
Jackson County Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang earlier this month ruled several of the state’s restrictions on abortion providers were unlawful now that a constitutional right to receive an abortion in Missouri has gone into effect.
But Zhang’s Dec. 20 order left other rules for providers in place, including licensing requirements that apply to abortion facilities in the state.
Because the licensing restrictions remain on the books, Planned Parenthood providers said they still cannot perform the procedure even after the order stated the ban was now unconstitutional.
The motion asks Zhang to lift the licensing requirements, which include giving patients who seek an abortion a pelvic exam and confirming pregnancies with lab tests and clinical evidence.
In the recently filed motion, Planned Parenthood attorneys said the licensing provisions are unconstitutional because they discriminate against abortion providers and patients.
Other health care providers are not bound by the same rules, Planned Parenthood’s lawyers said. That means the laws violate the part of the constitutional amendment that prohibits discrimination against providers and patients.
“Missouri has decided that even if you provide a single medication abortion, you provide one pill to a patient, you now become an abortion facility,” said Richard Muniz, Planned Parenthood Great Rivers interim president and CEO. “You have to have a license, and you have to meet all of the regulations that come with that license, and that is just not the case for even really invasive, complicated surgeries.
“For some reason, the state singles out abortion,” said Muniz, who also serves as an attorney for the organization.
Missouri clinics that offer vasectomies, cataract removals, liposuction and other surgeries are not subject to facility-specific licensing if surgeries comprise less than half their services, the suit states. That’s even if facilities give general anesthesia to patients.
“It is the exception, not the norm, to require a category of medical services to take place in a licensed facility,” according to the suit.
The licensing requirements also interfere with patients’ right to an abortion, the suit states, and therefore violates the part of the amendment that says the “right to reproductive freedom shall not be denied, interfered with, or delayed.”
In Zhang’s December order, she said there could be a compelling governmental interest to keep such rules in place.
The requirements pertained to the licensing of facilities, not to the patients’ care, she said, and therefore don’t violate the amendment.
Zhang’s decision is a temporary order, which halts the abortion ban until the issue can be permanently decided in court.
