Missouri Planned Parenthood Sues a Second Time to Overturn Health Codes It Wants to Violate

State   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Oct 31, 2017   |   11:34AM   |   Jefferson City, MO

The abortion business Planned Parenthood filed a second lawsuit against Missouri this week to block a new regulation that would protect women who experience complications after an abortion.

The AP reports this is the second lawsuit the abortion chain has filed against the new state abortion law this year.

Passed this summer, the law requires, among other things, that abortion facilities have a complication plan in place for women taking abortion drugs. New state regulations require that the plan include the abortionist or another ob-gyn who would be available to personally treat the woman if she experiences complications from the abortion drugs, according to the Columbia Tribune.

“The Missouri complications plan requirement for medication abortions is a common-sense regulation that ensures women have access to adequate care in medical emergencies,” state Attorney General Josh Hawley said in a statement. “My office will continue to vigorously defend these regulations.”

But Planned Parenthood Great Plains interim President Aaron Samulcek blasted the regulations, claiming that the state is just trying to stop women from having abortions.

“This ‘complication plan’ flies in the face of our patients’ constitutional rights to safe, legal abortion services without undue burden,” Samulcek said in a news release.

The lawsuit, filed Monday, states, “The regulation singles out medication abortion and its providers for different and more burdensome treatment than all other patients or health care providers regulated by the state, including countless medical procedures that are much riskier and for which complications are much more prevalent than medication abortion.”

The lawsuit claims the regulation has kept the Columbia, Missouri Planned Parenthood from providing drug-induced abortions.

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Here’s more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Planned Parenthood had filed an earlier lawsuit trying to block a provision of the law that requires the same physician providing an abortion to inform the patient of its medical risks three days before the procedure. A Jackson County judge ruled last week that the provision doesn’t impose an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions.

The earlier lawsuit was filed in state court and challenged the law under the Missouri Constitution. The latest lawsuit was filed in federal court, arguing that it violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

Planned Parenthood said the complication plan requirement has effectively banned medication abortions in Columbia, Joplin and Springfield. Plans have been approved in Kansas City and St. Louis. It argues the regulation harms women’s health by restricting access to medication abortions except at two facilities on opposite sides of the state.

For a time, all but one Planned Parenthood closed in Missouri because they could not or would not meet the state abortion clinic regulations. The laws required abortionists to have hospital admitting privileges for patient emergency situations, and abortion facilities to meet standards similar to other ambulatory surgical facilities. However, the abortion business sued, and courts blocked those regulations.

For two years,the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis was the only abortion facility in the state. It has developed a terrible reputation, sending at least 69 women to the hospital in ambulances since 2009, according to Operation Rescue. State inspection reports between 2009 and 2016 also showed more than 200 health and safety violations that endangered women.

In July, state lawmakers approved new abortion clinic regulations. It is these regulations that Planned Parenthood now is suing to overturn.

In the past year, two Planned Parenthood abortion clinics have re-opened in Missouri, and a third and fourth soon could follow.

Missouri also is being sued by Satanists who oppose its common-sense abortion regulations. The group is arguing that the regulations violate their religious freedom because they require that women be given information about their unborn baby’s development and wait 72 hours before going through with an abortion.