Ruling means Missouri's last abortion clinic stays open

O'FALLON, Mo. (AP) — Missouri's only abortion clinic will be able to keep operating after a state government administrator decided Friday that the health department was wrong not to renew the license of the Planned Parenthood facility in St. Louis.

Missouri Administrative Hearing Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi’s decision means Missouri will not become the first state without a functioning abortion clinic since 1974, the year after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. It wasn’t immediately clear if the state would ask a court to overturn the decision.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has been at odds with Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis clinic since March 2019, after an inspection turned up four instances of what the state called “failed abortions.” Planned Parenthood countered that the allegations were a ploy to end abortions in Missouri, a conservative state with a decidedly anti-abortion governor in Republican Mike Parson.

The state refused to renew the clinic's license in June 2019 and Planned Parenthood challenged the effort, leading to an administrative hearing in October.

During the hearing the state’s health director, Dr. Randall Williams, called the problems “imminently fixable,” but it wasn’t clear if the state and Planned Parenthood have since negotiated.

The hearing drew considerable attention after Williams revealed that his agency tracked the menstrual cycles of Planned Parenthood patients as part of its oversight of the clinic. Williams testified that an investigator made a spreadsheet at his request that included the dates of patients' last periods. He said the goal was to find women who needed multiple procedures to complete an abortion.

Yamelsie Rodriguez, president and CEO of Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis...