Planned Parenthood has found a way to perform abortions on Missouri women while avoiding Missouri’s pro-life laws. The abortion company plans to set up a mobile clinic across the state line in southern Illinois.
NPR reported that the abortion RVs may even set up across churches in what could be a volatile provocation.
The clinics will be part of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri and will provide medication abortions up to 11 weeks gestation.
Abortion clinics on wheels are proliferating across the country, and this mobile unit will be the first throughout the Planned Parenthood network, said Yamelsie Rodríguez, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri.
“It gives us a lot of flexibility about where to be,” Rodriguez said.
According to NPR, 37-foot-long “mobile facility – set up inside of an RV – will include a small waiting area, laboratory, and two exam rooms. It initially will provide medication abortion up to 11 weeks gestation, officials said. It eventually will offer surgical abortions, likely beginning sometime next year.”
In coming weeks, Planned Parenthood also will take over the location of Tri-Rivers Family Planning, a Title X health center in Rolla, Mo., that closed last week because of the loss of abortion revenue from central Missouri. The dual initiatives are two prongs in Planned Parenthood’s strategic plan to ensure women can continue to end the life of their unborn children in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that found Roe v. Wade unconstitutional. For the first time, the Supreme Court also referred to the fetus as an unborn human being, a biological fact that abortion supporters have refused to acknowledge.
“We are doubling down on our commitment to expanding access to family planning in the state of Missouri,” Rodríguez said, “while we continue to work nonstop to rebuild access to abortion in the state.”
In their interview with AP, Rodriguez declined to discuss safety and security measures for the mobile clinics, which some pro-lifers find revealing.
“If they don’t feel confident in expressing the safety and reliability of this option, then why should women feel comfortable going to them for such intimate medical help?” asked Emma Waters, a research associate in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation.
In Missouri, the state’s pro-life trigger law banned nearly all abortions the day Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Planned Parenthood — previously the state’s last abortion provider — ceased all abortion services. Most abortions are outlawed in at least 14 states, with bans blocked by the courts in nine states.
St. Luke’s Health System in Kansas City temporarily ceased providing emergency contraception in what many saw as a PR stunt, and wrongly cited that the Roe decision made such care unavailable. After they said a review was performed, the hospital resumed distribution of the abortion drug Plan B.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice