Missouri Planned Parenthood says legal action likely
Source: AP
Summer Ballentine, Associated Press
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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) A regional Planned Parenthood official said Wednesday that the organization likely would take legal action against the state of Missouri after a Columbia clinic halted abortions this week, leaving just one in the state that still performs them.
Laura McQuade, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said the organization would sue the state Department of Health and Senior Services if it revokes the clinic's abortion license. That action is expected after panel of University of Missouri Health Care medical staff voted in September to discontinue the form of privileges granted to Planned Parenthood doctor Colleen McNicholas, effective next week.
State law requires any physician who performs abortions must have admitting privileges at a hospital. The clinic on Monday stopped offering non-surgical abortions, which are induced with a pill, because of the Thanksgiving holiday and the state's 72-hour waiting period for women to receive an abortion.
Now, Missouri's only abortion clinic is in St. Louis, which performs both surgical abortions and pill-induced ones; women in western Missouri can visit a Planned Parenthood facility in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, Kansas.
The panel voted in the face of mounting political pressure as state lawmakers investigated abortion in the state, spurred by undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the transfer of fetal tissue that anti-abortion activists released starting in July................
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-missouri-planned-parenthood-says-legal-action-likely-2015-11
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