State Senator Rick Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville, protests outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas City on Tuesday, December 3, 2024, ahead of a hearing in a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood aiming to overturn the state’s TRAP laws (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).
On the eve of a Wednesday hearing that could strike down most of Missouri’s abortion restrictions, GOP lawmakers and anti-abortion activists gathered outside five Planned Parenthood clinics across the state, urging the courts to uphold abortion regulations.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have begun introducing legislation to weaken or overturn Amendment 3, which was narrowly approved by voters last month and guarantees the right to reproductive health care in the state constitution.
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The constitutional amendment, which passed with 51.6% of the nearly 3 million votes cast, will take effect Thursday. It bars the legislature from regulating abortion prior to fetal viability — generally considered the point when a fetus can survive outside the womb without extraordinary measures.
Already, at least 11 proposed amendments have been prefiled, aiming to reverse Amendment 3 through another public vote.
One bill, introduced by Republican State Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman of Arnold, would ask voters to ban gender-affirming surgeries for minors and restrict abortions, with exceptions only for medical emergencies and rape.
“Missouri families deserve clarity and compassion in our laws when it comes to protecting women and safeguarding innocent life like our children from danger,” Coleman said in a statement on Tuesday. “These constitutional amendments align with the beliefs of the majority of Missourians when it comes to supporting the dignity and value of all life.”
State Representative Justin Sparks, a Republican from Wildwood, is proposing his own repeal amendment. He said his decision was motivated by the close margin by which Amendment 3 passed.
Sparks’ proposed amendment would define a “person” as “every human being with a unique DNA code regardless of age, including every in utero human child at every stage of biological development from conception until birth.”
State Senator Rick Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville, has filed a similar amendment to Coleman’s, but one that includes abortion exceptions for fetal anomalies. His bill would also limit abortions in cases of rape or incest to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, and only if the victim has filed a police report.
Such reporting requirements have been widely criticized in other states, with victim advocates arguing they harm survivors.
However, on Tuesday, standing outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas City with other anti-abortion activists, Brattin said his immediate focus was appealing to the courts to uphold the state’s existing TRAP laws, which previously made it nearly impossible for doctors to provide abortions in Missouri.
The laws, passed over the last several years, include a mandatory 72-hour waiting period between the initial consultation and a surgical abortion, mandatory pelvic exams for medication abortions, and requirements for providers to report all abortions to the state.
“That’s going to be first and foremost, making sure that if they’re operating, they’re operating at the highest level of standard of care,” Brattin said.
‘Care delayed and care denied’: Doctor recalls 30 months under Missouri abortion ban
Less than 24 hours after Amendment 3 passed, the ACLU of Missouri, Planned Parenthood Great Plains, and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers filed a lawsuit seeking to strike down several of these TRAP laws.
The first hearing is set for Wednesday afternoon in Jackson County.
The Missouri Secretary of State’s office has filed a motion to move the proceedings to Cole County, where a judge had previously removed Amendment 3 from the ballot before the Missouri Court of Appeals quickly reversed the decision.
Planned Parenthood leaders hope that a swift ruling will allow them to start providing abortions at three health centers across the state — in Columbia, St. Louis’ Central West End, and Kansas City’s Midtown neighborhood — as soon as the new amendment goes into effect.
“Abortion is safe and a very common healthcare procedure,” Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, which operates the St. Louis clinics, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We know that Missourians across the political spectrum support access to this life-saving care, but anti-abortion extremists are again resorting to false, tired, and previously litigated scare tactics, trying to subvert the will of the people and keep abortion banned.”
A 2018 study by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that abortion complications are rare, with complications during childbirth being more common.
Outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis’ Central West End, Brian Westbrook, executive director of Coalition Life, called for the TRAP laws to remain in place “to make sure that women do not go into a place like this and leave in an ambulance headed to the hospital.”
“We stand here today with real, clear evidence that Planned Parenthood is not safe for women and requires serious oversight and inspections, not immunity,” he said.
Westbrook also referenced a 2018 health inspection report that found equipment at the Columbia clinic contained “black mold and bodily fluid.” Planned Parenthood officials later confirmed that the equipment had been replaced and the issue resolved.
The Columbia health center ceased performing abortions in fall 2018 when it could no longer meet the state requirement that doctors have admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 15 minutes from the clinic. After that, only the St. Louis clinic continued to provide abortions until the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The St. Louis clinic temporarily lost its license until May 2020, when then-Missouri Administrative Hearing Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi ruled that the state health department had to reinstate the license.
“Planned Parenthood has demonstrated that it provides safe and legal abortion care,” Dandamudi’s ruling stated. “In over 4,000 abortions provided since 2018, the Department has only identified two causes to deny its license.”
Westbrook concluded his Tuesday press conference by expressing hope that the Trump administration will enforce the Comstock Act, a law from 1873 that bans mailing obscene materials, including abortion medications.
He also voiced support for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s efforts to hold Planned Parenthood accountable.
The Missouri Attorney General’s office recently filed a court challenge to Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit. The new lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Cole County, questions Planned Parenthood Great Plains’ ability to sue, claiming a 2010 settlement agreement prevents them from doing so.
In a recent official opinion, Bailey argued that while Missouri statutes banning abortion prior to fetal viability are no longer enforceable, the state can still enforce other abortion-related laws.
“In a contest where the ‘yes’ side was able in effect to rewrite the ballot summary language, received tens of millions of dollars in funding from out of state, and outspent the ‘no’ side 6 to 0,” Bailey wrote, “this tight margin suggests the result may be very different if a future constitutional amendment is put up for a vote.”
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