Planned Parenthood Advocates rejects hearing, refuses to legitimize false propaganda dressed up as legislation

Statement from M’Evie Mead, Planned Parenthood Advocates in Missouri Director of Policy and Organizing:

Today, the Missouri Senate is holding a hearing on Senate Bill 388, a disingenuous measure that criminalizes doctors and is not based in science or reality. We will not legitimize this latest attack on Missourians’ health care by testifying.

We all want families to have access to the best medical care available. As a health care provider, Planned Parenthood works every day to ensure people have access to safe, compassionate, high-quality health care and information.

This propaganda dressed up as legislation is written by politicians, not doctors. Repeating the same lies used to restrict access to safe and legal abortion, anti-reproductive health lawmakers are trying to criminalize doctors for a practice that doesn’t exist. This is not how medical care works, and it’s irresponsible to imply that it is.

Those attempting to restrict access to women’s health care must be called out for their real intention: running in a political race to make Missouri the state that overturns Roe v. Wade at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Missourians need to know that this political race has costs – expensive legal costs and human costs for the women and families who need reproductive health care.

At a time when Missouri’s maternal mortality is increasing, we must be doing everything we can to increase access to health care — not to cut it.

 

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Planned Parenthood Advocates in Missouri works to protect and expand sexual and reproductive rights and health for all Missourians. It is a joint project of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes and Advocates of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, the political and advocacy arms of both Planned Parenthood affiliates in Missouri.

 

Download this statement as a PDF.