Planned Parenthood’s affiliates in Kansas City and St. Louis are asking a judge to pause a law that requires the organization to submit to the state a plan that outlines what to do in case of complications before the clinics offer patients medication-assisted abortions.
The Department of Health and Senior Services in March published last-minute rules for what those plans must include, the suit contends. Those new rules, which include that clinics have a 24/7 on-call physician with hospital admitting privileges to handle emergencies, are keeping patients in Missouri from exercising their right to get an abortion, it argues.
The state’s newly published requirements also state that clinics must provide provisions for emergency care for those who live more than 25 miles from a clinic where they receive a medication abortion.
In the past few months, a Jackson County Circuit judge temporarily overturned the state’s near-total abortion ban and many regulations that Planned Parenthood lawyers said kept people from accessing abortion. In November, voters passed a ballot initiative that ensured the right to the procedure.
Judge Jerri Zhang’s orders have left the requirements for a complication plan in place even after she put many other restrictions on hold.
The motion argues DHSS is using the remaining regulations and the new requirements for the complication plans to block abortion access.
“The newly promulgated emergency regulations largely reimpose the same onerous requirements previously enjoined by this court,” the suit reads.
Planned Parenthood earlier this year submitted its complication plans for medication abortions to the state. After the clinic submitted the plans, DHSS issued the emergency rule that added a new list of what complication plans needed to include. Last week, the state rejected the clinic’s submitted complication plans.
Because of these regulatory hurdles, clinics in Missouri have not yet begun offering medication abortions, but clinics in Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis are now offering abortions that do not use medication.
Planned Parenthood doctors have argued that no other similar procedures require the state to approve complication plans.
“The Complication Plan Statute is ‘facially discriminatory' because it does not treat services provided in abortion facilities [i.e., abortion] the same as other types of similarly situated health care, including miscarriage care,’" Planned Parenthood’s lawyers claim in the motion, submitted late last week.
Lawsuit over 'cease and desist' order
Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood Great Rivers sued Attorney General Andrew Bailey for issuing a cease and desist order against the agency performing medication abortions.
After Planned Parenthood Great Rivers submitted its complication plan, Bailey’s office sent a cease and desist order stating prohibiting the agency “from performing chemically induced abortions in Missouri for the duration of the order.” Planned Parenthood Great Rivers President and CEO Margot Riphagen called the letter harassment, especially considering that they weren’t offering medication abortions until the state approved a complication plan.
Planned Parenthood Great Rivers’ lawsuit is seeking an injunction against the cease and desist order. Among other things, the suit states “without proper notice that PPGR was entitled to request a hearing, the cease-and-desist order is rendered deficient, ineffective, and unlawful.”
“The public interest is served by restraining the Attorney General from weaponizing the statute meant to protect consumers to instead dangle a potential criminal charge over PPGR,” the lawsuit states.
Bailey’s office said in a statement that it “will not back down from its legal and moral obligation to provide safeguards to protect women and children.”
“This is the chaotic mess opponents of Amendment 3 predicted: that bad actors like Planned Parenthood would exploit dangerously ambiguous constitutional language to destroy life and subject women to extreme health risks,” the statement said.
St. Louis Public Radio reporter Jason Rosenbaum contributed to this report.
