COLUMBIA, MO – The state of Missouri is set to resume abortion rights after a judge blocked restrictions this week that got in the way of providers administering abortions, despite voters wanting to spell abortion rights into the state’s constitution, NBC News reports.
This ruling came after a Kansas City judge’s ruling last year that, although abortions were legal in the state, there were “certain regulations on the books,” NBC News said.
Many abortion facilities argued the ruling required them to give “medically unnecessary and invasive” pelvic exams to everyone receiving abortions, including “medically irrelevant” requirements for the size of doors, room, and hallways in these facilities, said NBC, adding these regulations are so strict that many abortion facilities cannot meet the requirements.
According to Jackson County Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang, these regulations are discriminatory “because it does not treat services provided in abortion facilities the same as other types of similarly situated health care, including miscarriage care,” wrote NBC News.
After voters approved the measure to add abortion rights to the Constitution last November, Planned Parenthood and others sued over Missouri’s abortion ban, a lawsuit that Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey is currently fighting, reported NBC News.
The president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, Margot Riphagen, argued “the state’s abortion facility licensing requirements were not about patient safety, but rather another politically motivated barrier to prevent patients seeking abortion from getting the care they need,” to NBC News.
The ruling, added NBC, is temporarily waiting for the outcome of the lawsuit by abortion-rights advocates.
Missouri’s amendment allows restriction to abortions “after viability with exceptions to ‘protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person,’” NBC reports, adding Missouri was one of the first states to prohibit abortions after the overturning of 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a national right to abortion.
