That the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision – as outlined in a draft Supreme Court opinion leaked to Politico earlier this month – was not entirely unexpected by Missouri pro-choice activists.
When the final decision is released—which could be in late June or early July—nearly all abortions will be illegal in up to 26 states, including Missouri.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you: reclaiming abortion access is not going to happen overnight,” Rodríguez said. “But…we are not going to go anywhere until every person can access abortion in this state without the fear of jail time, lawsuits, or harassment.” — Planned Parenthood of St. Louis President and CEO Yamelsie Rodríguez
“We knew, right? Here in Missouri, we knew. We have been living a post-Roe reality for years,” said Planned Parenthood of St. Louis President and CEO Yamelsie Rodríguez, one of thousands of pro-choice Missourians who gathered Saturday to express solidarity, share resources, and connect people with abortion resources and clinics.
Pastors, politicians, grandmothers, and babies were in attendance, surrounded by rainbow-vested clinic escorts from the Planned Parenthood clinic in the Central West End – Missouri’s one remaining abortion provider.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you: reclaiming abortion access is not going to happen overnight,” Rodríguez said. “But…we are not going to go anywhere until every person can access abortion in this state without the fear of jail time, lawsuits, or harassment.”
Missourians have, indeed, experienced something much closer to a post-Roe state than residents in many other parts of the country. Though abortion is technically legal in this state until viability (generally defined as 24 weeks into a pregnancy), an individual seeking an abortion in the state must adhere to a complex set of requirements – long waiting lists, mandatory waiting periods, state-required medical counseling that rights advocates call inaccurate – in order to get the care they’re seeking.
Even while Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land, the one abortion-providing clinic in the state has weathered yearly legislative shutdown attempts, and has operated under more and more complex restrictions. In 2020, only 167 known abortions were performed in Missouri, a steep decrease from the annual average during the decade prior. By early 2021, the clinic was only providing between 10 and 20 abortions per month, and that same year nearly half of abortions performed in Kansas were for Missourians who crossed state lines for the procedure.
The staff of the Missouri Abortion Fund, which has been operating since 2016, knows all about the effect of restrictions, including insurance requirements that block coverage of nearly all abortions in Missouri. So the fund’s dollars generally move out-of-state to places like Hope Clinic for Women just across the river in Illinois.
The plan will continue covering abortion costs for Missourians in need, no matter where those Missourians have to travel to access care.
Michele Landau of the Missouri Abortion Fund emphasized at Saturday’s rally that in this state, barriers to reproductive health care already are present: the average cost of an abortion for a Missouri Abortion Fund patient is $671, and “further abortion restrictions will only make the cost of care go up.”
“An abortion isn’t exactly something people can, want to, or should have to put off until their next paycheck,” Landau said. “And let us be extremely clear: abortion bans are a form of class warfare that affects marginalized communities.”
In the weeks since the draft decision was leaked, the Missouri Abortion Fund has received more than $200,000 in donations, more than it received in all of 2021.
Dr. Colleen McNicholas, a clinical abortion provider and Chief Medical Officer with Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, knows all too well the outsized impact the court’s ruling may have on marginalized communities.
“There are no two ways about it: the Roe decision is going away in weeks. The burden will continue to fall the hardest on people of color and people of low income,” she said. Speakers at the rally were particularly concerned with the health of Black women after Roe falls. Black women are more than three times as likely to die giving birth as White women, and that disparity is even greater in the St. Louis region. So, a policy of forced birth would likely cause greater harm to Black and Hispanic women, as Associated Press data analysis has indicated.
St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones said this should be taken as an opportunity to push politicians—particularly Democrats—who haven’t yet taken a public stance on abortion access to make their positions clear. “If they were pro-life they would be supporting universal health care. If they were pro-life they would be supporting bans on assault weapons. If they were pro-life they would be increasing funding for education…but they aren’t. They are not pro-life. We know that it’s not about being pro-life. It’s really about keeping vulnerable people and communities powerless.”
Congresswoman Cori Bush (MO-01) also spoke at the rally, greeted with deafening cheers by her constituents. Bush, a prominent advocate for abortion rights at the national level, told her abortion story in public for the first time in late 2021, after Texas banned all abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, often as early as six weeks. Since then, she’s told that story dozens of times, on local and national stages: the story of a 17 year old Black girl from St. Louis who was raped, and whose abortion allowed her to build a life for herself and one day enter the halls of Congress.
“I’m here today with all of you to declare, again, that abortion care is health care…is a human right,” Bush said. “We are here because of justice. But the issue is, we have Justices that don’t believe in justice.”
In a recent speech on Capitol Hill, Bush called out some of her colleagues in Congress by name, as they have stood in the way of an end to the filibuster. Bush and others in Congress and senators have renewed calls to end the filibuster in recent weeks, opposed by only a handful of their fellow Democrats. If the filibuster is abolished, this could allow the legislature to push through laws codifying abortion access.
“I’m talking to you, Joe Manchin. I’m talking to you, Susan Collins. I’m talking to you Lisa Murkowski,” Bush said. “Anyone who dares to have the power to do something in this moment, who understands the implications of this moment and is considering choosing not to.”
No matter the outcome in D.C., though, Missouri pro-choice organizers wanted to make one thing clear: they’re not backing down.
“We will figure it out. Because we aren’t going anywhere,” Michele Landau said. “Missouri Abortion Fund is not going anywhere. Hope Clinic for Women is not going anywhere. Pro-Choice Missouri, Planned Parenthood—none of us are going anywhere.”
