Missouri lawmakers are hellbent on making sure that women in the state are unable to obtain abortions and it seems that nothing will stop them. With GOP leaders emboldened by the new Trump era of politics (which means even more open misogyny than ever), state legislators have already filed a number of anti-abortion proposals (including 14 prior to the start of the legislative session alone) in what is a clear violation of women’s access to reproductive justice. As it stands, one Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis remains the sole licensed abortion provider in the state.
"People are driving hours to St. Louis, or they’re crossing over the state line into Kansas or other states in order to access services," says Laura McQuade, the President and CEO of Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, one of the Planned Parenthood affiliates that filed a lawsuit last year challenging the Missouri restrictions.
As a leader in restricting abortion access, Missouri passed laws more than a decade ago that required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals and abortion clinics to meet the same structural requirements as ambulatory surgical centers.
Last week, US District Court Judge Howard Sachs agreed with Planned Parenthood that these restrictions had a negative impact on the women of Missouri and that they failed to comply with an earlier Supreme Court ruling that these kinds of laws violate the Constitution.
"The abortion rights of Missouri women, guaranteed by constitutional rulings, are being denied on a daily basis, in irreparable fashion," he said. "The public interest clearly favors prompt relief." The restrictions will be halted while the effort to permanently strike down the laws moves through the courts.
But it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that this latest ruling appears to do nothing to stop Republican lawmakers from pressing forward. Their toxic attitudes toward women cannot be contained and with a misogynist and sexual assaulter in the White House backing up this kind of disgusting behavior, why bother?
Around the same time that Sachs issued the April 3 memo announcing his intent to grant the injunction, two Republican state Senators, frustrated that they were unable to block a St. Louis nondiscrimination ordinance protecting women that are pregnant, use birth control, or have had an abortion, took time during a discussion of tax hikes benefiting the state zoo to joke that women should go to the St. Louis Zoo for abortions, suggesting that it was "safer" and better regulated than the state’s lone abortion provider.
Meanwhile, shortly after Republicans in Congress moved to defund Planned Parenthood, state Republican Rep. Robert Ross proposed an amendment to House Bill 11—an appropriations bill for the Missouri Department of Social Services—that would allow the state to prevent "abortion services" providers from receiving state family planning funding. This could potentially include any group that provides even abortion referrals upon request.
Nothing like joking about women going to the zoo for abortions to prove what a cretin you really are. Meanwhile, the proposed amendment to HB11 is so broad that even those organizations that simply provide information about abortions could be excluded from funding. If this becomes law, it will devastate the access to family planning options women have in Missouri. But what do we expect when legislators who have no respect for women, our bodies and our choices are voted into office?