Missouri Governor Eric Greitens noted in June 2017 that a newly-proposed bill in the state legislature would make it illegal for abortion facilities to request ambulances to arrive without lights and sirens. “If a woman needs help,” Greitens said, as quoted by STLNews, “abortion clinics shouldn’t be able to tell an ambulance to come slowly — to not use their lights and sirens — or to go around to the back gate, just because they are worried that an ambulance arriving might make their abortion clinic look bad.”
STL News noted that the pro-abortion response to the proposed law was to label it as an “unnecessary and… veiled attempt to restrict access to abortion providers,” however, no specifics were noted as to how the law would actually “restrict” anyone’s access to an abortion facility. “The proposal,” says the news outlet, “would establish a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to a year in prison or a $2,000 fine, for clinic workers who make such requests that ‘interfere’ with medical assistance, according to Republican Sen. Bob Onder, who’s been involved in crafting the legislation.”
According to the pro-life group Operation Rescue:
While Planned Parenthood representatives have said the new bill has nothing to do with the health and safety of women… [i]t is a fact that ambulances running silently take longer to reach their destinations than ambulances running with lights and sirens.
OR notes that former New York Planned Parenthood worker Marc E. Heller stated that when he worked there, “We always said to the ambulance, ‘Please come to the back entrance. Please don’t use any sirens or lights,’ because we knew that the protestors that were there every day would call the press. And there would be a press thing about ‘another botched abortion.’”
OR adds that Planned Parenthood of St. Louis CEO Mary Kogut admits that her facility had “in the past asked that no sirens be used for the numerous medical emergencies that occur at that clinic,” stating, “[We] may have asked that the siren wasn’t on so that it didn’t alarm other people.” Kogut claims this is no longer policy at her facility.
Planned Parenthood of St. Louis has been called the most dangerous abortion facility in the nation, racking up an average of one ambulance call every six weeks since 2009.
