Like many other Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the nation, the nonprofit Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood in St. Louis provides a range of direct medical care and family planning services to women and men, including teens. Among the 30,000 clients it sees each year, some come to the clinic for abortions.
A decade ago, there were five such clinics in the state of Missouri, but today RHS is the only one left. If state health authorities, under pressure from forced-birther ideologues, have their way, even that one will be gone. On Friday, health officials refused to renew the clinic’s license on the grounds that it refused to allow them to interview seven of its doctors over “potential deficient practices.”
The clinic’s license expired May 31, but it’s been kept open by a preliminary injunction of a state appeals court judge. He ruled that the state couldn’t just let the license lapse but had to renew or deny it. Friday morning he ruled that the injunction will remain in effect, and the clinic will stay open, while he figures out whether the state can shut it down. If it can, Missouri would be the only state with no abortion clinic. Five others have only a single clinic each. CBS News reports:
Dr. Leana Wen, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told CBS News' Dr. Jon LaPook, "Once again, we came within hours of having more than a million women in Missouri not have any place to go for reproductive health care — which is health care. This is the state of emergency that we have all across the country."
She added, "We have a temporary reprieve, but this is only temporary."
Across the nation, many states have passed laws making it ever more difficult for health clinics to provide abortions. Medically unnecessary requirements that clinics be mini-hospitals and that physicians have admitting privileges at local hospitals in case an abortion goes wrong are just part of the picture. Other laws have required unneeded examinations and procedures, 24- to 72-hour waiting periods, and “counseling” that often misleads or outright lies to women about fetal development and the effects of abortion, along with other regulations that make abortion more difficult to obtain and more expensive.