Last Monday, a federal judge issued an injunction barring the State of Missouri from enforcing onerous regulations that would have shut down most abortion clinics in the state. Missouri had passed regulations that required expensive renovations for any facility providing abortions whether surgical, or medically induced using medication such as the RU-486 pill. In effect, Missouri’s law would have reclassified doctor’s offices and clinics that dispensed RU-486 as surgical centers, thus placing them under the same restrictions as clinics and hospitals that actually perform such procedures, such as D&C’s, etc.
Here’s the report from the Associated Press:
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. —
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Monday barring the state from enforcing new regulations on abortion clinics until it can negotiate a compromise with abortion providers. […]… [A]bortion providers were pleased because Smith said that if the state health department insisted upon the most stringent interpretation possible, the renovations required of some abortion clinics could prove so costly they could infringe on the right to an abortion. […]
Smith also granted a victory to abortion providers in ruling that the state likely would impose an unconstitutional burden on the right to an abortion if it enforced the new regulations on facilities that offer only medically induced — not surgical — abortions. […]
The law was challenged by Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, which operates clinics in Columbia and Kansas City, and by Dr. Allen Palmer, whose Women’s Care Gynecology practice offers abortions in the St. Louis suburb of Bridgeton.
Palmer testified he would close his practice if required to meet the new regulations, which an architect said would cost about $1.3 million for his clinic. […]
Planned Parenthood also claimed the requirements should not be imposed on its Kansas City clinic, which offers only medically induced abortions and not surgical abortions.
The judge’s preliminary injunction means “it will be very difficult for the state to ever enforce those regulations on the Kansas City center,” said Peter Brownlie, Planned Parenthood’s president and chief executive officer, and “the first and foremost thing is women who need this service will continue to be able to get it in Columbia.”
Ah, those damn activist judges. Still thinking Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and that the states ought to follow it. The rule of law — what a concept, eh?