A Missouri Planned Parenthood at the center of a political battle lost its license to perform abortions on Thursday, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The Columbia, Missouri Planned Parenthood’s license expired because it has not been able to find an abortionist who has hospital admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, as required by law, the report states.
The abortion clinic’s last abortionist, Colleen McNicholas, had her hospital admitting privileges revoked by the University of Missouri Health Care in December. State officials tried to take away the abortion clinic’s license after McNicholas lost the privileges, but a judge blocked the state’s actions, LifeNews reported.
The judge’s order gave the abortion facility more time to find a replacement for McNicholas, but its search has not been successful; and now its license will expire. The Columbia abortion facility has not performed abortions since it lost McNicholas in December.
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According to the report, the University of Missouri has a hearing scheduled for July 15 to reconsider giving McNicholas hospital admitting privileges again. If she obtains them, the Columbia facility could reapply for its abortion license.
For now, there is just one abortion facility left in the state, the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis.
The state law has saved thousands of unborn babies’ lives since it passed in 2005. Most of the state’s abortion facilities closed, dropping from seven in 2005 to two in 2014, according to the report. Abortion numbers also dropped significantly since the law went into effect, the report states.
The fate of Missouri’s hospital admitting privileges law is uncertain after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Texas law on Monday. The Texas law protected women’s health, saved the lives of thousands of unborn children and closed abortion clinics that could not ensure adequate protection for women. However, a majority of the court ruled the law constituted an “undue burden” on women’s access to abortion.
According to the local newspaper:
The impact of the decision in Missouri is still unclear. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Chris Koster said the ruling “calls into serious question the constitutionality of certain Missouri laws” and that his office is investigating because the decision was specific to Texas.
Planned Parenthood officials said they are meeting with constitutional lawyers to prepare a challenge to the Missouri laws that are nearly identical to the Texas laws requiring hospital privileges and hospital-like standards for abortion clinics, which the court struck down.
“Once those laws are not in effect we will immediately reinstate abortion at our Columbia location,” said Laura McQuade, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.
The University of Michigan voted to stop offering admitting privileges to McNicholas in September, in response to a state investigation prompted by undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress, which showed Planned Parenthood abortionists harvesting and selling aborted babies’ body parts. The investigation revealed a relationship between Planned Parenthood and the university.
McNicholas also is an abortionist at the St. Louis abortion clinic, and in Kansas and soon Oklahoma. She is heavily involved in the pro-abortion movement, not only doing abortions in three states but also setting up fundraising organizations to pay for them, lobbying state and federal legislators and hosting campaign events for pro-abortion candidates like Hillary Clinton, according to Marie Claire.
According to the women’s magazine, the St. Louis abortion facility charges a woman between $545 and $1,470 for an abortion. McNicholas reported doing about 31 abortions a day, which means that clinic is bringing in up to $45,570 per day on abortions alone.
Dozens of women have been hospitalized at the abortion clinics where McNicholas works. Pro-lifers documented 28 times in six years when women were hospitalized for abortion-related complications at the St. Louis Planned Parenthood.
