Planned Parenthood Great Plains plans to offer abortion services at two more clinics in Missouri, the organization announced Monday, bringing to three the number of abortion providers in Missouri.
Planned Parenthood’s midtown Kansas City clinic has received an abortion license and will now offer medication abortion services.
The organization anticipates its Columbia clinic will offer both medication and surgical abortion services in the coming days.
Planned Parenthood had announced that it would offer the expanded abortion services after U.S. District Judge Harold Sachs earlier this year blocked two Missouri abortion restrictions. One required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The other required abortion clinics to meet the physical specifications of ambulatory surgery centers.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court found similar restrictions enacted by the state of Texas to be unconstitutional.
Missouri has appealed Sachs' order to the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.
Planned Parenthood Great Plains spokeswoman Bonyen Lee-Gilmore says the additional abortion services will help improve rural health care access.
“Countless patients who live in rural areas in Missouri have busy lives and can’t afford or have the time to drive hundreds of miles twice to access safe, legal abortion services,” Lee-Gilmore says.
Until now, the Planned Parenthood clinic in Saint Louis had been the only abortion provider in the state.
