Last month the clinic halted its non-surgical abortions, which are induced with a pill, because its physician Colleen McNicholas lost privileges with University of Missouri’s hospital. The portions of the bill that have already been implemented have reduced the number of clinics in Texas from 41 to 18; if it is upheld by SCOTUS, the state will be left with only ten clinics to serve the more than 60,000 Texan women who require abortions annually – making the procedure so inaccessible in the state as to be essentially illegal.
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After Foley’s announcement, Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services, or DHSS, said it planned to revoke the clinic’s abortion license at midnight on Monday.
Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri President and CEO Laura McQuade said the organization celebrated the ruling, adding that she’s confident the next hearing will be in Planned Parenthood’s favor. “I haven’t used hyperbolic rhetoric about Planned Parenthood”.
The move to revoke the license came amid backlash over undercover videos released by anti-abortion activists of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the transfer of fetal tissue.
Missouri’s Republican-dominated legislature has passed some of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws in recent years.
The lawsuit also alleges that the DHSS action does not provide sufficient time for the clinic’s physician to try to get new hospital privileges or to allow for the clinic to try to find a new physician. After Loftin stepped down from his post amid protests over race relations on campus, a group calling itself Mizzou for Planned Parenthood launched a social media campaign to urge the university to reverse the decision.
Hank Foley, the interim chancellor, issued a statement today before the vigil, saying he would not overturn the decision to revoke admitting privileges.
The group will hold a vigil outside the Columbia Health Center Monday night, followed by a march on an administrative building at the University of Missouri.
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Three people were killed, including one police officer, on Friday when a gunman stormed a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colo. The system’s medical staff voted to discontinue the refer and follow privileges McNicholas held amid a legislative investigation of abortion.
