Free Republic

News reports indicate Planned Parenthood is consolidating its facilities in Missouri. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, and its regional affiliate Planned Parenthood Great Plains is responsible for its facilities in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas. Now that Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma have generally prohibited abortion except to save the life of the mother, the organization has opened a new abortion facility in southeast Kansas, and it intends to close its facility in Joplin, Missouri — just north of Fayetteville, Arkansas. The St. Louis Business Journal reports the Joplin facility will close January 1. Planned Parenthood also intends...

A Missouri circuit judge has ruled against several clergy members who argued that the state's abortion laws infringe on the Missouri Constitution's Establishment Clause. The lawsuit, led by a diverse group of faith leaders, was met with a dismissal. The challenge, initiated in January 2023 by representatives from Christian, Jewish and Unitarian congregations, was spearheaded by advocacy groups, including Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the National Women's Law Center. They sought an injunction to halt Missouri's abortion laws, which lack exceptions even in cases of rape or incest, arguing these laws violate constitutional provisions against the...

The Supreme Court this week declined to hear an appeal from a Missouri Christian college seeking to halt a Biden administration policy the college believes may force it to allow biological males in women’s dormitories. Last February, the College of the Ozarks near Branson, Missouri, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) directive. The directive stated HUD would enforce the 1968 Fair Housing Act’s prohibition on sex discrimination as a ban on discrimination because of “gender identity.” College of the Ozarks had previously lost several times in the lower courts after...

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) - Demonstrators protesting the overturning of Roe v. Wade blocked traffic on westbound I-64 near Busch Stadium Sunday afternoon. The protest started in Kiener Plaza before protesters marched onto westbound I-64 and blocked traffic. The demonstrators were on the highway for about 15 minutes. Protesters walked off the highway on the Broadway entrance ramp. Nobody was arrested, police tell News 4. Missouri State Rep. Elizabeth Coleman, who helped pass Missouri’s trigger law that bans nearly all abortions in the state, issued a statement Sunday:

A former student of a Missouri boarding school has been identified as the suspect who shot and wounded three Houston police officers after an hours-long standoff Thursday night. Roland Caballero, 31, is in custody after the Thursday night shooting, according to ABC13 and KPRC 2 in Houston. Caballero reportedly was shot in the neck and was taken to the hospital. Two of the three officers had been released from the hospital as of Friday afternoon, according to Houston Police. The third is in stable condition, police said. Caballero attended Agape Boarding School in Stockton, Missouri, as a teenager from around...

St. Louis, MO – In a 96-page decision, Missouri Administrative Court Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi granted an application for relicensure to Reproductive Health Services Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, Missouri, in spite of life-threatening botched abortions cited by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, who moved to revoke the abortion facility’s operating license. Dandamudi noted in his decision that the two women who were seriously injured – one of which underwent several bungled abortion attempts for the same pregnancy and one who hemorrhaged so severely that she required treatment in the Intensive Care Unit – was not enough...

<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Critics of a new Missouri ban on abortions at or after eight weeks of pregnancy are asking a judge to block the law from taking effect this week.</p> <p>Attorneys for Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union head to court Monday to ask U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs to put the law on hold while their legal challenge against it plays out in court. They face a tight deadline: The law is set to take effect Wednesday.</p>