Abortion is legal in Missouri — and doctors are still fighting to provide care

The Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis on June 24, 2022 (Tessa Weinberg/Missouri Independent).

Abortion is legal, and we’re providing care in Missouri.

As physicians and Missourians, we remain grounded in our work based on what we see in exam rooms every day: people making deeply personal decisions, supported by evidence-based care. Even with a constitutional right in effect for more than a year, restoring care while navigating the lingering impacts of political interference remains ongoing and challenges our ability to provide care our patients are entitled to.

On the eve of a two-week trial in Jackson County — the most significant legal moment yet to realize that right — we are reminded that the health, dignity and well-being of people receiving care must remain at the center of this work.

That constitutional amendment, the Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative, was approved by Missourians just over a year ago. That vote affirmed a simple principle that guides good medicine: health care decisions belong to patients, made in consultation with their trusted providers.

Within just months of that vote, Planned Parenthood resumed abortion care in Missouri. From Columbia to Kansas City to St. Louis, we’ve welcomed and treated patients who are relieved to receive procedural abortion care closer to home.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has confirmed that abortion care is being provided in hospitals. After years of laws and restrictions hollowing out Missouri’s reproductive health care system by limiting how, when and whether providers could care for patients, we can once again find hope as we rebuild safe, local abortion access in Missouri.

Abortion care takes many forms, and all options must be available to ensure providers can offer the full range of options based on a patient’s medical needs and circumstances.

Procedural abortion, which is currently available in Missouri, is a medically necessary and appropriate option for many patients. So is medication abortion. This form of care uses the same safe and effective medications prescribed for miscarriage care and accounts for the majority of abortions nationwide, which is why we are challenging the ban on its use.

Building meaningful abortion access for patients across the state will not be possible without this essential care.

When government policies restrict or stigmatize specific forms of care, they interfere with the doctor–patient relationship. Interference creates delays, confusion, and fear, all of which can worsen health outcomes. Additionally, when patients fear scrutiny or exposure around their health care decisions, they may avoid care altogether.

That risk extends beyond abortion to miscarriage management, prenatal care, and routine reproductive health services.

These concerns are especially acute in Missouri, where more than 55 counties already lack OB/GYN providers. Patients in rural and low-income communities often travel long distances for care, taking time off work, arranging childcare, and absorbing additional costs. Political interference in reproductive health care compounds these barriers and deepens existing inequities for already vulnerable patients and their families.

Reproductive freedom is not theoretical. It is lived every day in exam rooms, where patients make decisions about their own bodies, and clinicians provide care guided by professional standards of care, ethics, and trust.

These patients are our neighbors, our friends, our family—Missourians whose lives, health, and dignity are shaped by whether they can access care when they need it.

The legal process that has unfolded since Missourians demanded their right to reproductive freedom has been technical and deliberative, and the upcoming trial will be no different. As physicians who provide this care, our obligation, both in the clinic and the courtroom, is clear: we center our patients, always.