Judge ends pause on abortion regulations after Missouri Supreme Court decision
Marie Moyer
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Jackson County Judge Jerri Zhang issued an order vacating her previous rulings that allowed abortions to continue in Missouri.
The action withdraws Zhang’s own prior orders and is procedural with the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday that stopped the enforcement of state abortion regulations. The high court ordered Zhang to end her preliminary injunction and reconsider issuing one under a different legal standard.
While the right to abortion is still active in the state, tight state regulations regarding safety requirements for clinics that allow abortions are still in place, now no longer restrained by Zhang’s preliminary injunction.
“Unqualified medical practitioners, moldy equipment, and a lack of approved complication plans are just some of the many terrible things we predicted would follow in the wake of Amendment 3, ” said Attorney General Bailey in a statement Tuesday. “Today’s decision from the Missouri Supreme Court is a win for women and children and sends a clear message – abortion providers must comply with state law regarding basic safety and sanitation requirements.”
In his statement, Bailey emphasized that state regulations preventing coerced abortions, requiring sterile equipment and clean facilities, ensuring qualified abortion providers and having emergency complication plans were essential protections for women undergoing abortions. For many of them, Bailey added that abortion rights activists were working to remove them.
In the initial preliminary injunction documents, Zhang ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood and blocked several of these regulations, with abortion advocates arguing many of the state’s regulations were too tall an order for abortions to be performed under.
“Attorney General Andrew Bailey and anti-abortion politicians in Jeff City have once again weaponized our political system against Missourians,” Abortion Action Missouri executive director Mallory Schwarz said in a statement Tuesday.
In court documents, Planned Parenthood argued that under the state’s current abortion-specific informed consent laws, patients were required to receive state-mandated information and materials that are biased and are meant to sway a patient’s choice in getting an abortion.
In the state’s rule for abortion complication plans, Planned Parenthood said that the Department of Health and Senior Services required medication abortion providers to have a written contract with a board-certified or board-eligible ob-gyn who has agreed to be “on-call and available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
They argued that it was both difficult to find an ob-gyn who agreed to the terms and claimed the rule was unnecessary if a patient could go to an emergency room during a complication.
Under Missouri’s law that requires abortions to be performed only by physicians, Planned Parenthood argued for allowing advanced practice registered nurses to perform abortions along with physicians to expand access to care. Zhang declined to block this rule.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood Great Plains confirmed that abortion services were offered at Missouri health centers starting Feb. 15 and ending Tuesday with the Supreme Court’s decision.
Check back for updates to this developing story.
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