O’FALLON, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s only abortion clinic will be able to keep operating after a state government administrator decided Friday that the health department was wrong not to renew the license of the Planned Parenthood facility in St. Louis.
Missouri Administrative Hearing Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi’s decision means Missouri will not become the first state without a functioning abortion clinic since 1974, the year after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.
“In over 4,000 abortions provided since 2018, the Department has only identified two causes to deny its license,” Dandamudi wrote, adding that Planned Parenthood has “substantially complied” with state law.
The health department has been at odds with Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis clinic since March 2019, after an inspection turned up four instances of what the state called “failed abortions.”
While closing the clinic would have huge symbolic meaning, the practical impact on Missouri women seeking abortions would be minimized because Planned Parenthood last year built a new abortion clinic just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Fairview Heights, Illinois.
