By Cheryl Sullenger

St. Louis, MO – The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services filed a new motion yesterday asking St. Louis Judge Michael Stelzer for more time to determine whether Reproductive Health Services Planned Parenthood’s abortion facility license should be renewed.

RHS Planned Parenthood, located in St. Louis, is the only active abortion facility in Missouri. 

The DHSS conducted a routine annual inspection in March and discovered what is now known to be “30 deficient practices” outlined in a 60-page deficiency report filed with the court yesterday. 

RHS Planned Parenthood’s facility license, which allows it to conduct surgical abortions, expired on May 31, 2019, without having submitted an acceptable plan of correction. Instead, the abortion business sought and received a temporary restraining order from Judge Stelzer that same day, which prevented the license from immediately expiring. 

Stelzer later issued a preliminary injunction that is keeping RHS Planned Parenthood open pending the DHSS’s final decision on Planned Parenthood’s license renewal, which the judge ordered must be made no later than June 21, 2019.

According to the MissouriTimes.com, the DHSS is seeking a plan of correction for each deficiency cited. 

On June 5, 2019, DHSS director Randall Williams told reporters that RHS Planned Parenthood had agreed to begin complying with Missouri regulations that require a pelvic exam prior to abortions and that require the same abortionist who conducts the pre-op exam to also conduct the abortion.

It now appears that each of the thirty classes of violations uncovered during the March inspection have still not been addressed by RHS Planned Parenthood in a detailed plan of correction as required.

The MissouriTimes.com also noted details of botched abortions cited in the 60-page deficiency report:

  • A failed pelvic exam of a patient which led to two failed abortion attempts
  • No complication report submitted to DHSS after the failed abortions as required by law
  • Another failed abortion attempt resulted in a patient being hospitalized after she became septic
  • Deviation from standard care that resulted in a patient becoming hospitalized and listed as in “critically ill” as she lost more than two liters of blood and needed a uterine artery embolization
  • Failure to conduct proper pelvic exams or give informed consent to multiple patients

Earlier this week, an inspection report was released pertaining to RHS Planned Parenthood’s contracted pathology laboratory, Boyce and Bynum Professional Services.  It noted the case of “Patient A” who received an abortion at RHS Planned Parenthood on May 26, 2018.  That patient required an additional abortion on June 30, 2018, due to fetal and placental parts that remained in her womb after the first abortion.  The lab failed to compare the two reports to ensure the second abortion finally removed all the tissue or did they notify RHS Planned Parenthood that the abortion was incomplete.

Operation Rescue, with the help of Missouri pro-life activists, has documented 74 medical emergencies that have occurred at RHS Planned Parenthood in the past ten years, including three emergencies that required ambulance transport for women to a local hospital within a 22-day period ending on May 15, 2019. 

Two lists with detailing assortments of abortion complications were obtained by Operation Rescue from the St. Louis Fire Department.  (List 1, List 2) Of those, hemorrhage was by far the most common.

The DHSS has sought to interview seven abortionists who were involved in mishandled abortions, but to date, only two are known to have cooperated with the DHSS investigation.  The five others, have obtained attorneys and have refused to cooperate.

The DHSS had issued subpoenas for the seven abortionists to testify at the June 5, 2019, preliminary injunction hearing, but those subpoenas were quashed by Judge Stelzer, who ruled that their testimony was not necessary.

“The DHSS needs time to complete its investigation and to ensure that RHS Planned Parenthood is in full compliance with Missouri laws and regulations,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.  “It is important to get this right, because if it’s not, the lives of women will literally remain at risk from shoddy practices that are even now endangering women seeking abortions at RHS Planned Parenthood.”

Operation Rescue is carefully monitoring this developing story and will post updates as they become available.