- Associated Press - Saturday, June 10, 2017

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature is returning to the Statehouse Monday for a special session sought by Gov. Eric Greitens to consider new abortion regulations aimed at fighting back against a federal judge’s ruling against some state laws on the procedure.

Greitens has said a May ruling by U.S. District Judge Howard F. Sachs “weakened our state’s health standards in abortion clinics, so we’re also proposing some basic, common-sense standards to keep Missourians safe.”

The ruling, which the state is appealing, invalidated requirements that doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, and that clinics meet hospital-like standards for outpatient surgery.

Planned Parenthood affiliates with Missouri health centers sued over those restrictions after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down similar laws in Texas, ruling those laws sharply reduced the number of abortion clinics there. Sachs said he followed the high court’s ruling and that Missouri has been denying abortion rights “on a daily basis, in irreparable fashion.”

In place of those regulations, Greitens is calling lawmakers back for the second time this summer to enact more abortion laws during a special session.

“Unfortunately, thanks to Judge Sachs’ ruling we’ve struck down the laws that have been in place for 30 years to protect the health and safety of women,” said Lake St. Louis Republican Sen. Bob Onder.

Onder said he’ll sponsor legislation addressing Greitens’ concerns.

Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region President and CEO Mary Kogut criticized the special session - which can cost as much as $28,000 a week in the Senate and between $50,000 and $100,000 in the House - as expensive and unneeded.

“There already are more strict standards around abortion care than on other medical services, which is why this special session is unnecessary,” she said.

Greitens wants lawmakers to give the attorney general, now Republican Josh Hawley, authority to prosecute violations of abortion laws. Onder and other abortion opponents say that could be helpful if local prosecutors, potentially in heavily Democratic cities, don’t pursue potential violations.

“As election of local prosecutors has become more political in recent years and more ideological, are we in a situation where the prosecutor for the city of St. Louis, for instance, would never enforce a violation of state abortion laws?” Campaign Life Missouri Director Sam Lee said.

Greitens said he wants to ban abortion providers from asking ambulances to drive without lights or sirens, a practice Onder said has occurred at the St. Louis abortion clinic.

“Medical emergencies in this setting should be treated like any other medical emergency,” Onder said. “No one should interfere with emergency medical personnel doing their job trying to care for a woman who’s having a complication from a procedure.”

Kogut said Planned Parenthood has dropped policies on ambulance lights and sirens, but said “there are times where we may have asked that the siren wasn’t on so that it didn’t alarm other people.”

Greitens also is asking for mandatory annual inspections of clinics, whistleblower protections, and oversight of how complications from abortions are handled.

Kogut said the St. Louis clinic - the only center licensed to provide abortions that are medically unnecessary in the state - receives at least one health inspection yearly and sometimes two. The Department of Health and Senior Services currently can inspect clinics at any time, but there’s no requirement that reviews occur on a regular basis.

Kogut said the organization also follows federal standards on whistleblower protection.

Greitens wants abortion clinics to submit plans for dealing with complications to the health department for approval. Missouri’s new health director suggested in a May email to media outlets that previous administrations have been lax in enforcing a 38-year-old law mandating disclosure of complications from physicians who treat women after abortions.

A spokesman for the St. Louis region’s Planned Parenthood has said the organization was unaware until recently that it had to report any complications from the procedures but that it would comply with the law. Kogut said the organization had previously shared complication data with the state but did not submit official forms detailing that information.

Greitens also has asked lawmakers to overturn a St. Louis ordinance that bans discrimination based on abortion, pregnancies and other “reproductive health decisions.”

The regional Planned Parenthood affiliates said last month that the agencies have applied for licenses for their clinics in Kansas City and Columbia following the Sachs court ruling. They’re hoping to offer abortion services at those locations by this summer and are preparing related applications to the state for the Joplin and Springfield sites.

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