Planned Parenthood challenging Missouri’s abortion restrictions

“If they really thought they had a winning hand here, they would have brought the challenge in the 5th Circuit against the Texas law”, Mr. Eastman said, adding that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, under which North Carolina falls, is “pretty solidly on the left”.

The stakes for abortion rights in America are high, especially with an incoming Trump-Pence administration that is very unlikely to advance women’s health.

“There certainly are states that have better, or fewer unnecessary restrictions, and do what they can to protect abortion rights”. Because of the regulations, only one licensed provider remains to serve over one million women in the state. Those groups told reporters these suits will be the first of many.

These measures severely restrict access to abortion in Missouri, which has just one licensed abortion facility in the entire state to serve almost 1.2 million Missouri women of reproductive age, according to the complaint.

Nick Cannon spoke out against Planned Parenthood, saying the reproductive health organization promotes “population control”.

The president-elect said he would prefer abortion laws to be determined at a state level, and said if abortion was banned in a state where a woman needed the procedure, she would have to travel to another state. During his time as a government official, Pence has made restricting women’s health care and personal choice a core issue.

The law is clear: States can not ban abortion. “We are proud to stand with our partners in challenging these unconstitutional measures and vow to continue the fight for women’s health, equality, and dignity”. Viability has to be determined by a doctor and is different for every pregnancy, but it usually occurs after 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The Missouri lawsuit asks for an injunction to prevent the state from enforcing the requirements and a judgment that both laws are unconstitutional. One is a requirement that doctors providing abortions have admitting privileges at a local hospital, and the other requires that abortions be performed in ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), outpatient facilities with strict and expensive infrastructure requirements that many medical professionals agree aren’t necessary to ensure the safety of abortions. Among others, they require women to wait 72 hours between visiting a doctor and having an abortion; require parental consent for minors; and prohibit the use of telemedicine in medication abortions.

“Neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes”, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in last July’s majority opinion. Only two such laws, in Arizona and Idaho, have been blocked by the courts. Courts have blocked similar measures in IN and Louisiana, but Burke says she expects that more states will propose versions of her organization’s Unborn Infants Dignity Act when lawmakers convene next year. “They realize the sense of urgency to head to the courts now knowing that the judicial landscape will change under a pro-life President Trump”, she said. His vice president-elect, Mike Pence, governed IN as one of the nation’s most hardcore abortion opponents. His pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), co-sponsored a bill in 2005 that would have given personhood rights to a zygote from the moment of conception, effectively outlawing abortion and some forms of birth control.