Judge temporarily blocks Missouri abortion ban from going into effect

A Missouri judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a law that would have banned abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy.

The preliminary injunction will be in place until the final verdict is reached in the case. The next oral arguments in the case have not been scheduled yet, according to a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood.

The injunction blocks portions of a law that was signed by the governor earlier this year.

“What little abortion access in Missouri is left, will stay in place for the time being,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, the acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images, FILE

“In the meantime, we cannot ignore the part of this law that remains in place, which allows politicians to interfere with the patient-provider relationship,” she said in the statement.

If Tuesday’s injunction had not been ordered, the ban would have gone into effect on Wednesday.

This legal challenge to the state’s proposed abortion ban is separate from the fight over the licensing of the state’s lone abortion clinic.

The clinic, Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region (RHS), has been at the heart of its own legal challenges for months, squaring off with the state’s Department of Health and Senior Services.