On Monday, March 3, Planned Parenthood in Columbia, Missouri, celebrated the first baby aborted at the facility since 2018. That day, four babies were killed via D&C (dilation and curettage) abortions, torn to pieces as they were suctioned out of their mothers’ wombs. At the same time, pro-life legislators in the state continued with attempts to undo the damage done by the state’s pro-abortion Amendment 3, which voters supported in November and which made abortion a state constitutional right.
“I hope people really feel how meaningful this is,” Dr. Iman Alsaden, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood Great Plains, told the Missouri Independent.
In February, the first abortion was committed in the state since 2018 at a Planned Parenthood facility in Kansas City. Alsaden was there that day, along with five other abortionists from Planned Parenthood Great Plains, to be part of that first abortion in the state in seven years before heading back to Columbia to retrain the staff there on how to abort children.
After aborting the babies on Monday, they gave the mothers “goody bags” stocked with pads, underwear, a heat pack, and “a big handful of condoms, just in case.”
Outside the facility, pro-lifers gathered in prayer. Bonnie Lee, a retired registered nurse, has been present on the sidewalk since 2009, offering women support and hope. She believes that it won’t be long until the lives and dignity of preborn children are protected once again in Missouri.
“I believe the referendum on truth is out there,” she said.
It took months for abortions to resume following the November vote due to safety regulations that remained in place on abortion facilities. In February, Jackson County judge Jerri Zhang struck down those regulations, calling them “unnecessary.” Those regulations were safety nets for women and included a 72-hour mandatory waiting period between seeing an abortionist and having an abortion and the requirement that abortionists have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital in case of medical emergencies that the facility is not equipped to handle. Such emergencies are more common than people realize.
Pro-life efforts
Pro-life legislators and the state attorney general (AG) have been working to reverse the pro-abortion trend in Missouri and are focused both on a new amendment and on the abortion pill.
AG Andrew Bailey ordered a cease and desist against Planned Parenthood facilities in Missouri last week and said in a press release that it was to prevent “Planned Parenthood from violating state health and safety standards by performing chemically induced abortions without an approved complication plan to treat the 5% of women who FDA acknowledges are harmed so severely that they have to go to the emergency room.”
The state’s consumer protection laws require that any facility dispensing the abortion pill must have a complication plan in place when the FDA label of an abortion drug states that more than 1% of the patients require surgical intervention. The FDA says that up to 4.6% of women who take the abortion pill require emergency care.
“Planned Parenthood has a long history of disregarding the health and safety of Missouri women,” said Attorney General Bailey. “The Courts have stripped away basic licensing requirements that protect women, but I will not stand by while Planned Parenthood continues to flout the law and put women’s lives at risk.”
Planned Parenthood has two days to respond before the AG’s office can issue the cease and desist.
Meanwhile, the state legislature is working on ensuring that a new amendment goes before voters either this year — through a special election — or in November 2026.
“I’m here to tell you the Missouri supermajority of Republicans will not stand for this,” Missouri state Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman said in February. “There will be another option to vote so that people understand this is not going to continue in the state of Missouri.”
Missouri pro-life legislators have filed dozens of bills to either repeal or curb Amendment 3, but have been focused on a proposed constitutional amendment that would reinstate the previous pro-life law with the added exception for rape and incest. Pro-abortion state senators, however, have vowed to filibuster any pro-life effort.
Coleman told Live Action News, “The legislature, along with a group of private attorneys, is working to get something back on the ballot.” The attorneys are working on drafting the language for a new state constitutional amendment to be passed by the legislature, she explained, but there is also a petition in the works to get the proposed amendment on the ballot in case legislative efforts are unsuccessful.
“We have a functioning chamber for the first time in many years,” she said. “Lawmakers and the supermajority are all working well together, so I feel very hopeful.”
The proposed bills — SJR 33 and HJR 54 — would repeal the state’s pro-abortion Amendment 3. If approved, they would ensure, “No abortion shall be performed or induced upon a woman, except in cases of medical emergency, rape, or incest. In the case of abortions performed or induced in cases of rape or incest, the abortion may be performed or induced no later than twelve [12] weeks gestational age of the unborn child and only if documentation is presented to the attending physician that the rape or incest has been reported to a law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction to investigate the complaint at least forty-eight [48] hours prior to the abortion.”
They would also ensure that “No public funds shall be expanded for the purpose of performing or inducing, or otherwise assisting, any abortion.”
The state specifically defines induced abortion as the “act of using or prescribing any instrument, device, medicine, drug, or any other means or substance with the intent to destroy the life of an embryo or fetus in his or her mother’s womb; or… the intentional termination of the pregnancy of a mother by using or prescribing any instrument, device, medicine, drug, or other means or substance with an intention other than to increase the probability of a live birth or to remove a dead unborn child.”
In other words, Missouri specifically states that an abortion is an act that carries the intention of killing the baby or ensuring the baby dies. Therefore, exceptions for medical emergencies such as premature rupture of membranes, infection, preeclampsia, or any other health condition are not necessary because treatments for these conditions do not include intentionally and deliberately killing the baby and, therefore, are not considered abortion.
In addition, the rape and incest exceptions are unnecessary. Killing human beings in the womb specifically because of how they were conceived is the discriminatory imposition of the death penalty on an innocent person for the crimes of a sexual aggressor.
The proposed bills also state that women have a “right to health care in cases of miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and other medical emergencies and the provisions of this section shall not be construed to limit a women’s access to such health care.” Treatment for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies are not considered induced abortions because they do not carry the intent of causing the baby to die.
