Abortions on hold in Missouri after ruling from state Supreme Court

By David A. Lieb, Geoff Mulvihill and Hannah Fingerhut - Posted at Baptist News:

Published May 28, 2025

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Planned Parenthood halted abortions in Missouri on Tuesday (May 27) after the state’s top court ordered new rulings in the ongoing legal wrangling over the state’s abortion ban, which was voted down in last November’s election.

The state’s top court ruled that a district judge applied the wrong standard in rulings in December and February that allowed abortions to resume in the state. Nearly all abortions were halted under a ban that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

In Tuesday’s two-page ruling, the court ordered Judge Jerri Zhang to vacate her earlier orders and reevaluate the case using the standards the court laid out. Zhang ruled that she was allowing abortions to resume largely because advocates were likely to prevail in the case eventually. The Supreme Court said it should first consider whether there would be harms from allowing abortions to resume.

The state emphasized in its petition filed to the state Supreme Court in March that Planned Parenthood didn’t sufficiently prove women were harmed by the state’s strict abortion regulations. The state argued Judge Zhang’s decisions left abortion facilities “functionally unregulated” and women with “no guarantee of health and safety.”

Among the regulations that had been placed on hold were ones setting cleanliness standards for abortion facilities and requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at certain types of hospitals located within 30 miles or 15 minutes of where an abortion is provided.

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See also:

• Missouri Supreme Court reinstates abortion safety requirements (Christian Post)