Missouri gives St. Louis Planned Parenthood clinic license to offer abortions into 2021

Missouri has licensed Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis clinic, the state’s sole abortion provider, into 2021, ending a year-long fight with state regulators.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services issued the license Thursday after on-site inspections June 11 and 16, according to its spokesperson Lisa Cox. The license would expire June 25 of next year, she added.

Yamelsie Rodriguez, the Planned Parenthood affiliate’s president and CEO, called the inspection process “prompt” and the inspectors “cordial” in a statement.

“This abortion license, while critical to our ability to provide care, still cannot undo the harm that longstanding medically unnecessary policies in our state inflict on patients,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “We continue to keep our doors open, and can continue to care for all patients who choose to access reproductive health care, including safe and legal abortion, in Missouri and across the region.”

The state health department revoked Planned Parenthood’s license in June 2019.

Its decision, urged by a court order, followed a March inspection which turned up complications in four surgical abortions. Two left patients still pregnant (requiring another procedure), one resulted in an infection and one ended with the patient rushed to the hospital, bleeding heavily.

Part of the reason for the license denial, the department argued, was that it could not complete its investigation because the physicians involved, who were medical residents or fellows in training, would not submit to interviews.

Planned Parenthood sued in civil court, and the complaint was moved to administrative court, which handles licensing disputes.

Through its legal battles, it was revealed that the state health department was not triggered by a patient complaint but rather a review of medical records by inspectors. The state health department revealed it was able to find patients with complicated abortions by creating a spreadsheet that included the fetus’ gestational age and the last normal date of Planned Parenthood patient’s periods.

In May, an administrative hearing commissioner issued a 97-page ruling concluding that the clinic was wrongfully denied its license by the state’s Department of Health and Senior Services.

“Planned Parenthood has demonstrated that it provides safe and legal abortion care. In over 4,000 abortions provided since 2018, the department has only identified two causes to deny its license,” Missouri Administrative Hearing Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi wrote in the ruling.

This story was originally published June 25, 2020 at 12:17 PM.