KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Planned Parenthood was set to resume offering abortions at several Missouri clinics on Friday, immediately after a newly passed constitutional amendment took effect overturning the state’s near-total ban, but they remain a complicated court in the Holding pattern The fight drags on.
The problem is that the amendment does not explicitly override state law. And even before the end of Roe v. Wade allowed Missouri’s Republican-led legislature to approve a near-total ban, the state’s numerous restrictions left only a single abortion clinic in St. Louis.
Missouri’s Republican attorney general says many of those venerable laws – such as a 72-hour waiting period – should continue to be enforced despite the change; Planned Parenthood says they shouldn’t do that.
The prosecutors are caught in the middle. They want an injunction stopping enforcement of the venerable laws while lawyers argue over what to do.
But so far, Jackson County District Judge Jerri Zhang has not acted on that request.
“As of today, Missourians have an unrealized constitutional right,” Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said in a written statement. “They have a right to abortion under the state constitution, and every day that they cannot receive that care here at home, their rights are being violated.”
Here’s what you need to know about the complicated legal battle and the state of abortion access:
Missouri was one of several states to expand access
Missouri is one of five states where voters approved ballot measures in November that would add abortion rights to their state constitutions. Ultimately passed by nearly 52% of voters, it guarantees people the right to make decisions about their reproductive health, such as whether to have an abortion, apply contraception or undergo in vitro fertilization.
While the amendment is widely expected to prevent the state from restricting abortions to the limit, abortion rights advocates must convince judges to prevent enforcement of venerable rules.
Reproductive rights activists are also suing to overturn Arizona’s 15-week abortion ban, which conflicts with the fundamental right to abortion that voters approved.
Maryland’s novel abortion law change will make no immediate difference since the state already allows access to abortion. The situation is similar in Montana, where abortions are already legal until they are profitable. Colorado’s measure enshrined pre-existing access and also reversed an earlier change that banned state and local governments from funding abortion, opening the possibility for state Medicaid and government employee insurance to cover the care.
From voting booths to a courtroom in Kansas City
The day after voters approved Missouri’s law change, Planned Parenthood’s two affiliates asked a judge to declare the state’s near-total abortion ban and most other abortion regulations unenforceable.
Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey has already acknowledged that most abortions are now legal. Last month, he issued a statement saying he would not enforce Missouri’s ban on pre-viability abortions.
But his office is still struggling to enforce a 72-hour waiting period before an abortion can be performed; bans on abortion based on race, gender, or a possible diagnosis of Down syndrome; and a requirement that medical facilities that perform abortions be licensed as ambulatory surgical centers, among other things.
The change leaves lawyers struggling with venerable laws
This patchwork of venerable laws is a major problem for abortion providers. They say those restrictions effectively blocked abortions in most of the state even before Missouri passed a law banning all abortions except in medical emergencies minutes after Roe was overturned.
“We already live in a post-Roe world,” said Dr. Iman Alsaden, the medical director of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, at the time.
But Missouri Attorney General Josh Divine has defended those laws, arguing that most women regret their abortions and that the requirements are intended to give them time to think about their decisions.
“We’re trying to create a situation where women can actually make the choice that they want to make, and we know that in most cases that is the birth of a child,” Divine said after a court hearing Wednesday.
Planned Parenthood’s Wales said Missourians have shown at the ballot box that they value reproductive rights. And she expressed frustration with what she described as “an attorney general’s office that has made clear that it will fight tooth and nail to prevent Missourians from accessing their new constitutional right to reproductive freedom.”
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Ballentine reported from Columbia, Missouri.
