By:Anna Spoerre
Missouri Independent
The Planned Parenthood clinic in Gladstone began offering medication abortion on Wednesday, becoming the fourth location in Missouri to open appointments following a court ruling that expanded access to medication abortion for the first time since 2018.
This is the first time the suburban Kansas City clinic has ever offered medication abortions. Planned Parenthood officials said the Gladstone clinic will initially open up several medication abortion appointments each month. Available appointments have “filled quickly,” a spokesperson said in a press release Wednesday.
“This is what having constitutionally protected care looks like: appointments in more communities, with fewer burdens on patients,” said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains. “Today’s expansion is another step toward ensuring Missourians’ rights aren’t just protected on paper; they’re available to patients closer to home.”
The Gladstone clinic is located in Kansas City’s Northland, about 13 miles north of Planned Parenthood’s Kansas City location. It is one of four clinics in Missouri operated by Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which also oversees clinics in Kansas and Arkansas.
In a June 19 decision, Jackson County Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang struck down decades of laws enacted by anti-abortion lawmakers, including a mandatory pelvic exam for patients seeking medication abortion, a 72-hour waiting period between an initial consultation and an abortion, as well as a state-approved complication plan for doctors prescribing medication abortion. Planned Parenthood officials previously said these regulations made it all but impossible to prescribe the abortion pill in Missouri.
Medication abortion is used in about two-thirds of abortions in the United States, making it the most common way to end a pregnancy despite ongoing efforts at the federal level to limit access to mifepristone, the first of two medications used in a medication abortion.
Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis opened medication abortion appointments in the days following the ruling. But not every Planned Parenthood clinic in the state has the capability to offer medication abortion appointments. This is because of two statutes that remain in place.
Zhang in her ruling upheld an in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone and a requirement that only physicians can perform abortions or prescribe medication abortion, making it more difficult for clinics that aren’t staffed by a full-time physician to begin offering it.
The regulations were challenged by Planned Parenthood and the ACLU of Missouri in November 2024 and tried in court in January.
“For years, Missouri physicians were prevented from providing the standard of care by politicians with no medical training,” Dr. Iman Alsaden, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said in a statement Wednesday. “It’s difficult to put into words what it means to begin righting that wrong by once again offering medication abortion to patients in Missouri.”
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway has said her office plans to appeal the decision to the Missouri Supreme Court.
In November, Missourians will be asked to vote on a legislature-proposed constitutional amendment that would again ban abortion with limited exceptions for medical emergencies and for survivors of rape and incest. It will be listed on the November 2026 ballot as Amendment 3.