Although the Planned Parenthood clinic is the last licensed "abortion facility" in the state, the law regulating abortion clinics in Missouri does not apply to hospitals. Several of the largest hospitals in St. Louis are operated by SSM Health, a Catholic health system that does not allow direct abortion.
Barnes Jewish Hospital's Women and Infants Center in St. Louis, however, lists "pregnancy termination" as one of the services offered at the hospital. St. Louis Public Radio reported in 2017 that Barnes Jewish performs about 150 abortions per year, generally in the case of danger to the life of the mother or fetal abnormalities.
The pro-abortion research group Guttmacher Institute reports that around four percent of abortions are performed in hospitals.
Should the Planned Parenthood clinic be barred from performing abortions, Missouri will be the only US state without a legal abortion clinic. Despite this, there is a private surgical abortion clinic close to St. Louis, across the Mississippi River in Granite City, Ill. In addition, a Planned Parenthood clinic 20 miles from St. Louis in Belleville, Ill. offers medication-induced abortion.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed this month a law vastly expanding abortion in Illinois.
Besides ending a ban on dilation and extraction, the law removes regulations for abortion clinics and ends required waiting periods to obtain an abortion; lifts criminal penalties for performing abortions and would prevent any further state regulation of abortion; requires all private health insurance plans to cover elective abortions, and eliminates abortion reporting requirements as well as regulations requiring the investigation of maternal deaths due to abortion. Illinois' Catholic bishops have denounced the new law.
On the other side of the state, nearly half of all abortions performed in Kansas in 2017 were on Missouri residents, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Kansas has two licenced abortion cinics, one in Overland Park near Kansas City and one in Wichita.