Hearing over abortion clinic ends

St. Louis center awaits ruling on Missouri bid to void license

ST. LOUIS — An administrative hearing to decide whether Missouri can revoke the license for the state’s only abortion clinic concluded Thursday with testimony from a clinic official.

The hearing in St. Louis before a commissioner with the Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission was expected to last five days but wrapped up a day early. A ruling isn’t expected until February at the earliest.

The state health department wants to revoke the license for Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis clinic, citing concerns about four instances of what the state called “failed abortions.” Planned Parenthood officials say conservatives are trying to use the licensing process to end abortions in Missouri.

The St. Louis clinic remains open pending the commission’s ruling.

Kawanna Shannon, director of surgical services at the clinic, testified that the state’s March inspection was tense from the start.

Investigators were adamant that the clinic should be performing two pelvic exams before an abortion, at a patient’s first visit and again immediately before the procedure. The clinic initially agreed to the second exam, but soon decided it was so “unbearable” for patients that it stopped in defiance of the state law, Shannon said.

The health department relented in June, issuing an emergency rule relieving Planned Parenthood of the requirement.

Shannon said that a month after the March inspection, a top health department official showed up to scrutinize records. That investigator was William Koebel, chief of the division that oversees licensing of abortion clinics and other surgical centers. Koebel told Shannon he was there in response to an unspecified complaint, Shannon said. She later learned it was Koebel himself who filed the complaint, she said.

The investigation eventually turned up four instances where women required multiple procedures before abortions were successfully completed.

Separately, plaintiffs seeking to overturn Minnesota abortion laws had their first day in court Wednesday.

A coalition of groups urged a Ramsey County District Judge Thomas Gilligan on Wednesday to let their case proceed while state attorneys argue the lawsuit should be tossed out.

The coalition involved says Minnesota’s abortion restrictions are medically unnecessary and legally flawed.