JEFFERSON CITY – The following statement can be attributed to Susan Klein, Executive Director, Missouri Right to Life:
On February 14th, 2025, Jackson County Judge Jerri J Zhang, eight weeks after she had ruled that Missouri’s health and safety regulations protecting women who are having an abortion did not violate Amendment 3, reversed her position and ruled that Missouri’s abortion health and safety regulations were now unconstitutional under Amendment 3. A sample of those health and safety regulations are listed below.
* A requirement that only doctors perform abortions.
* A requirement to follow all acceptable sterilization standards for surgery instruments and equipment.
* A requirement for the abortion provider to perform a sufficient examination of the patient to determine the unborn child’s gestational age, identify preexisting medical or other complications and detect any factors which could influence the choice of the procedure, anesthesia or preoperative or postoperative management.
* A requirement that ultrasounds only be performed by doctors or licensed medical technicians.
* A requirement to have emergency trays equipped to treat seizures, bleedings, anaphylactic shock, respiratory arrest, and cardiac arrest.
* A requirement to have emergency drugs, oxygen, and intravenous fluid in a surgical procedure room along with a manual breathing bag and suction machine.
* Requirements that facilities for surgical abortion have adequate scrub up facilities, that the sterilizing room be equipped with a steam sterilizer and that there are sufficient surgical instruments sterilized and available for each patient who presents herself for an abortion.
This is a tragic day for Missouri mothers and unborn children. It is a scientific fact, supported by findings of biologists and embryologists, that life begins at conception. Abortion is a brutal and violent procedure often involving the starving or dismemberment of the unborn child.
The Judge had already ruled that Amendment 3 allows for the killing of unborn children with a heartbeat and of unborn children who can feel pain through these brutal methods. Now the Judge and Amendment 3 have gone a step further and by removing the licensing and health and safety regulations from abortion clinics and have put women at great risk if they seek an abortion in Missouri.
The judge also took away the state’s ability to inspect these abortion facilities. An abortion at a facility that does not meet these health and safety requirements is the very definition of a “back-alley abortion”.
Missouri Right to Life asks the Missouri House and Senate to pass legislation to put this issue back on the ballot so voters can respond to this extreme action by the court prompted by the lawsuit by abortion supporters that want no boundaries or regulations.