By Cheryl Sullenger
St. Louis, MO – According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Reproductive Health Services Planned Parenthood held a press call this morning and announced that the abortion facility may be forced to halt abortions when its facility license expires on Friday, May 31, 2019.
RHS Planned Parenthood is the last abortion facility still operating in Missouri. Ending abortions there would make Missouri the first abortion-free state.
“Missouri has led the way on enacting innovative abortion laws and regulations that are meant to protect the lives of innocent babies and their mothers. Planned Parenthood can or won’t comply,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “For years we have been calling out the St. Louis Planned Parenthood as being the most dangerous abortion facility in the U.S. If this abortion facility halts abortions, we know that fewer babies will die and women will be spared from suffering serious injury from abortions.”
While abortion numbers have decreased in recent months, the number of medical emergencies requiring ambulance transport have increased dramatically.
Most recently, three women were transported by ambulance to hospital emergency rooms in a 22-day timespan ending on May 15, 2019. Other recent medical emergencies occurred at RHS Planned Parenthood on April 24 and April 26, 2019. In all, 74 medical emergencies have been documented at this Planned Parenthood in the past ten years.
The most common abortion complication suffered by women transported by ambulance from RHS Planned Parenthood is hemorrhaging, a life-threating, yet avoidable, condition.
The RHS Planned Parenthood has experienced other major issued in the past year or so:
- Inability to conduct chemical abortions due to failure to meet new safety regulations.
- CEO Mary Kogut resigned last October and has not been replaced. Postings several other positions also remain unfilled.
- Failure to expand abortions into Springfield and Joplin as planned, due to inability to meet licensing requirements.
- Up to a 20-day wait to obtain surgical abortions, as confirmed by Operation Rescue, perhaps because the current medical director is moonlighting at an abortion clinic in Illinois.
- Failed inspection report in 2017 with multiple safety violations, and where the Medical Director questioned whether hand-washing between glove changes was a new standard.
“Missouri pro-life groups, who we have worked with over the years, have accomplished a great deal. Their approach to activism and legislation is an example for others to follow,” said Newman.
