Anna Spoerre
Reporter, Missouri IndependentAnna Spoerre covers reproductive health care for The Missouri Independent. A graduate of Southern Illinois University, she most recently worked at the Kansas City Star where she focused on storytelling that put people at the center of wider issues. Before that she was a courts reporter for the Des Moines Register.
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Although Missouri voters restored abortion rights in 2024, multiple legal, political and court battles over the common abortion medication mifepristone continue to run through the state. Hawley is taking aim at the drug through proposed legislation and calling for federal investigations. -
Jefferson City-based Beacon Reproductive Health Network called Hawley’s accusation that they are an abortion provider "intentionally misleading." The nonprofit distributes grants to 65 Missouri health centers, including city and county health departments and hospital-based clinics. -
The legislation is aimed at hospitals that don't stock emergency contraception on religious grounds. -
The activists who tried and failed to defeat Missouri's 2024 abortion-rights amendment have regrouped under a new PAC called“Her Health, Her Future." They're betting that more time, tighter coordination and earlier backing from top Missouri Republicans can help them pass an abortion ban measure this fall. -
For the second year in a row, state Sen. Mike Moon, an Ash Grove Republican, is sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment that would treat embryos as people, potentially exposing abortion patients and providers to murder charges and eliminating rape and incest exceptions. -
The legislation threatens the death penalty if doctors don't provide life-saving care to babies born after an attempted abortion. It also opens the door for lawsuits against people who help someone access abortion medication. -
The Missouri Attorney General's Office renewed its attempts to access abortion patient records as the state tries to build a case in favor of strict abortion regulations -
Abortion may be legal again in Missouri, but only 80 elective abortions have been performed in the year since Amendment 3 passed. Decades of restrictions have gutted the state’s provider network, and medication abortion is still unavailable as the courts sort out which old laws are constitutional. -
The proposed constitutional amendment also includes a ban on gender-affirming health care for minors, a provision opponents say violates a state law requiring amendments only cover one subject. -
Oscarina gave birth to her son without her husband after he was deported from Missouri months earlier. Advocates, activists and attorneys say many undocumented mothers are foregoing medical care out of fear of being detained and deported.
