A US court on Thursday weighed the fate of the last abortion clinic in Missouri, which risks becoming the first state in 45 years without access to the procedure amid a nationwide push to curtail reproductive rights.
As a judge heard arguments, crowds of protestors took to the streets of Missouri's largest city St. Louis, warning of dire consequences if the state of six million loses its sole abortion provider.
"No one should decide what women do with their bodies," said Jane Wees Martin, a 70-year-old painter who was among the hundreds holding up signs reading "My vagina, My choice," and "Reproductive autonomy is a human right."
Denouncing a "war against women," health management student Neha Hanumanthiah, 19, said "I did not realise how conservative my state was."
John Sauer, Missouri's solicitor general, told Thursday's hearing the non-profit had "washed its hands of the issue."
Planned Parenthood's attorney Jamie Boyer argued meanwhile that Missouri was acting in bad faith, with "shifting interpretations of its regulations."
She said the organisation could not "in good conscience ask doctors to sit for an interview on wide-ranging (subjects) in an investigation which might result in criminal charges."
On Thursday, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed into law his state's measure prohibiting abortions of fetuses with a "detectable heartbeat."
It says the state's health department is attempting to shut down its abortion service by "unlawfully conditioning a decision on its routine license renewal application on completion of a supposed 'investigation' of a patient complaint."
Appearing on a local Fox affiliate, obstetrician-gynecologist Colleen McNicholas said that "by continuing to change the way that they are interpreting their own rules, it makes it impossible for us to be able to comply because we are just guessing what they think." -
Missouri Governor Mike Parson, who recently signed the state's new abortion law, on Wednesday accused Planned Parenthood of "actively and knowingly violating state law on numerous occasions."
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