By Dave Andrusko

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley
Hewing to the adage if at first (second and third) you don’t succeed, try, try again, two Missouri-based Planned Parenthood affiliates filed a federal lawsuit yesterday seeking a temporary restraining order to block enforcement of still another component of Missouri’s omnibus SB 5 law passed during a special session of the legislature.
In this instance, the latest lawsuit, filed in federal court in Kansas City, seeks to block a regulation [referred to as the “Complications Plan Requirement”] that mandates when an abortion “provider” performs chemical abortions, they have a written agreement with an obstetrician-gynecologist who has admitting privileges at a hospital in case of emergencies.
In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood claims the regulation “is the latest in a series of medically unnecessary requirements imposed by the State, which will, without basis, limit women’s access to an extremely safe procedure using medications alone.” The law is scheduled to go into effect Friday.
“The Missouri Complications Plan Requirement for medication abortions is a commonsense regulation that ensures women have access to adequate care in medical emergencies,” Attorney General Josh Hawley said in response. “My office will continue to vigorously defend these regulations.”
Planned Parenthood has been very busy in both state and federal courts. As NRL News Today reported, Judge S. Margene Burnett of the Circuit Court of Jackson County Missouri in Kansas City, refused to block Senate Bill 5’s “same-physician” mandate. The same-physician mandate requires that the abortionist performing the abortion be the same person doing the medical consultation 72 hours prior to the abortion. This mandate was challenged by Planned Parenthood and two abortionists.
Judge Burnett concluded the law was not an “undue burden,” adding, “The Court declines to reach the conclusion that the recent same-physician requirement, at best a moderate modification of the informed consent restraints already in place, is unconstitutional.”
Not only was the same-physician upheld, the entirety of Senate Bill 5 went into effect last Tuesday.
The challenge to the “same-physician” mandate was in a state court. The lawsuit against the Complications Plan Requirement is in federal court.
In a statement that both underestimates the complications and trivializes the unborn child, Bonyen Lee-Gilmore, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said of chemical abortions, “Getting your wisdom tooth out has higher complication rates.”