JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The state of Missouri has been ordered to pay over $156,00 in attorney’s fees to the abortion giant Planned Parenthood after it had been sued for seeking to revoke the abortion license of the organization’s Columbia location.
As previously reported, Planned Parenthood of Columbia ceased providing medical abortions in November as the University of Missouri Health Care decided to discontinue granting the location admitting privileges. The hospital voted last September to no longer offer the “refer and follow” privileges, which allowed Planned Parenthood to obtain permission from the state health department to offer medical abortions.
Without the privileges, the Columbia location lost any authority to offer abortifacients to mothers. Abortionist Colleen McNicholas was consequently left without means to legally provide abortifacients at the facility.
In December, the state planned to revoke Planned Parenthood’s authorization to offer abortions after it was unable to comply with Missouri’s admitting privileges law.
However, the organization sued to challenge the decision, and in May, U.S. District Judge Nanette Loughrey ruled partially in favor of Planned Parenthood in that she issued an injunction against the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) plan to revoke Planned Parenthood’s license.
“The evidence submitted to the Court indicates that DHSS’s unprecedented hasty actions were likely the result of political pressure being exerted by Missouri legislators and the Department’s perception that if it did not act in accordance with the legislature’s desires, its budget would be cut,” she wrote.
However, she left intact the requirement for Planned Parenthood to find a hospital that would grant admitting privileges. While the Columbia location’s license expired anyway without being able to find a willing hospital, Loughrey ordered this week that the state pay the organization $156,788 in attorney’s fees over the lawsuit.
The state had asked Loughrey to reduce the payment since her order was basically moot as Planned Parenthood lost its license anyway.
Planned Parenthood says that in light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down Texas’ admitting privileges requirement, it will likely challenge Missouri’s law to in order to resume performing abortions.
“Once those laws are not in effect we will immediately reinstate abortion at our Columbia location,” Laura McQuade, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
As previously reported, in June, the U.S. Supreme Court opined 5-3 that Texas’ admitting privileges requirement and ambulatory surgical center standards placed a “burden” on mothers seeking abortions.
“We conclude that neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority. “Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a pre-viability abortion, each constitutes an undue burden on abortion access, and each violates the federal Constitution.”
Nearly 60 million children and counting have been murdered in the womb since the court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.
There is currently only one facility that performs abortions in Missouri.
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