Days before Missouri’s Republican government is set to decide whether it will renew the license of the state’s only remaining abortion clinic, doctors at the facility have announced they will no longer comply with state restrictions and guidelines they deem “unethical,” harmful, and medically unnecessary.
Planned Parenthood of St. Louis said Wednesday that it would stop performing pelvic exams on patients receiving abortion care 72 hours before the procedure, in addition to standard exams doctors perform at the time of an abortion. The extra pelvic exams were mandated by the state health department last month.
Clinic medical director Dr. David Eisenberg told CBS News that he had determined in recent weeks that the exams were having a harmful effect on his patients.
“[Patients] are being victimized by a state regulatory process that has gone awry. It is not making them healthier, it is not making them safer, it is only victimizing them,” Eisenberg said. “Over the last few weeks, I have new evidence to say that 100 percent of the patients who I’ve taken care of who’ve undergone this inappropriate, medically unnecessary, unethical pelvic exam have been harmed by that.”
“Because to do so, in my opinion, is just assault,” he continued.
The clinic announced its defiance of the regulations two days before the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services is scheduled to announce whether it will allow Planned Parenthood of St. Louis to continue providing abortion care.
A federal judge issued a temporary injunction last month after the state attempted to shut down the clinic, saying the clinic “demonstrated that immediate and irreparable injury” would result from the revoking of its license.
If the license is not renewed Friday and the injunction is not extended, Missouri will become the first state in the U.S. to have zero safe, legal abortion clinics since 1973.
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