Missouri lawsuit seeks to restore abortion access after Amendment 3, block restrictions

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Missouri’s Planned Parenthood affiliates moved swiftly on Wednesday to formally block the state’s near-total abortion ban and longstanding restrictions on the procedure, mounting a legal challenge just hours after voters enshrined a right to reproductive freedom into the state constitution.

A lawsuit, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court, seeks to invalidate the ban, which Missouri enacted in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. It also asks a judge to block a slew of restrictions on abortion access so that clinics in Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis can begin offering abortions by Dec. 5.

The legal action from Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers comes after Missouri voters approved Amendment 3, enshrining the right to reproductive freedom in the Missouri Constitution. Roughly 51% of voters backed the amendment.

“There is not time to waste,” said Emily Wales, the president and CEO of Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains. “Missourians are less safe, less healthy and less free every day abortion is out of reach in this state.”

The lawsuit names as defendants the state of Missouri, Republicans Gov. Mike Parson and Attorney General Andrew Bailey as well as the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

Even before the abortion ban, Missouri had for decades imposed severe restrictions on providers that whittled down access to just one clinic in St. Louis by 2019. Abortion rights supporters had signaled that those regulations, as well as the ban itself, would need to be struck down in court.

In addition to overturning the ban, the lawsuit seeks to block the patchwork of TRAP laws, or “targeted regulation of abortion providers,” that lawmakers have passed over the years.

Those regulations include a requirement that women wait 72 hours between seeing a doctor and having an abortion. Others include a requirement that abortion facilities be licensed as ambulatory surgical centers and another that requires doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 15 minutes away.

The cluster of regulations was a main driving force in curtailing abortions, effectively causing the number of abortions in Missouri to drop from 6,163 in 2010 to 150 in 2021 before the ban was enacted.

The legal action is intended to allow providers to begin offering abortion access on Dec. 5, which would also mark the effective date of Amendment 3.

Wales said the goal of the lawsuit was to allow abortion access to return to the Planned Parenthood Great Plains clinics in Kansas City and Columbia. Richard Muniz, the interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, said his affiliate also planned to restart services in St. Louis.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the ACLU of Missouri and the American Civil Liberties Union are representing Missouri’s Planned Parenthood affiliates in the lawsuit.

What happens next for access?

The lawsuit comes as Missouri Republicans have signaled attempts to overturn the right to an abortion. The GOP-controlled General Assembly is likely to try to advance constitutional amendments to undo Amendment 3.

“If it does pass, then we really have to really think about how we can mitigate some of the effects,” Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican, said before the vote. Hoskins, who was elected secretary of state on Tuesday, said lawmakers would plan to “mitigate some of the effects” of Amendment 3 if it passed.

But while abortion rights supporters have acknowledged that abortion access would not return to Missouri overnight, they remained confident that Amendment 3 would offer a pathway to allow doctors to eventually provide the procedure again.

The court battles over the restrictions will likely center on a key passage in Amendment 3 that states “the right to reproductive freedom shall not be denied, interfered with, delayed or otherwise restricted unless the government demonstrates that such action is justified by a compelling governmental interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California-Davis, previously told The Star that the language in the amendment gave abortion rights advocates “real firepower” to strike down the restrictions.

However, others were more cautious in the lead-up to Tuesday’s vote.

Pamela Merritt, a longtime abortion rights activist originally from Missouri, predicted that it could be years before clinics reopen in the state. She said that certain restrictions would likely be struck down, but not enough for clinics to open up on either side of the state, in Kansas City and St. Louis.

“That’s not going to be permanent,” she said prior to the vote. “But that’ll probably be the pattern for five to 10 years.”

Shortly after Tuesday’s vote, Emily Wales, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said that supporters would “move as quickly as we can.”

“I do think the courts in Missouri will be well aware that the people have just voted, that they have a mandate to restore access,” Wales said Tuesday. Hours later, the organization filed Wednesday’s lawsuit.