ST. LOUIS — As abortion services resume in Missouri, protesters returned to the sidewalks outside the Planned Parenthood offices in St. Louis this week in the frigid cold.

Anti-abortion advocates from Coalition Life gathered Monday at the entrance to the Planned Parenthood clinic at 4251 Forest Park Avenue in the Central West End. Temperatures were in the upper teens.

As snow fell, the coalition’s executive director, Brian Westbrook, criticized Planned Parenthood.

“They are not fighting for women,” Westbrook said. “They are fighting to remove every possible check on their harmful, deadly business.”

Margot Riphagen, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, said Monday that the facility will begin offering abortion services this week. She was not more specific.

Kansas City’s Planned Parenthood clinic, Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, restarted abortions on Saturday.

In November, Missouri voters struck down the state’s abortion ban by approving Amendment 3. But state regulations still required abortion clinics to hold state licenses, which came with rules such as mandatory pelvic exams for women seeking abortions. The clinics called the rules onerous and unethical.

Then, late Friday afternoon, Jackson County Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang issued an order blocking the state license requirements.

Riphagen on Monday said abortion-rights groups will continue the legal fight to make sure the judge’s decision becomes law.

“It is clear that it’s politically motivated and not actually necessary to provide the quality care that we have been providing,” she said.

Riphagen said she was thrilled by the judge’s ruling Friday. She said the facility on Forest Park Avenue is fully staffed and prepared.

She said they would continue to explore all available options for expanding services.

Coalition Life said it plans to have its members offering “sidewalk counseling” to women heading into the facility as long as Planned Parenthood offers abortions.

For the next six days at the Central West End location, Coalition Life also will host a prayer vigil and fast in protest of the court decision.

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, R-Arnold, joined the coalition Monday in criticizing the judge’s ruling.

“Planned Parenthood has preyed on women to make millions of dollars to fund research, to fund this insidious lie that women are incapable, that women cannot be mothers and that motherhood is destroying them,” Coleman said. “It’s a very sad day.”

State lawmakers vow to ‘fight back’

Abortion opponents in the Legislature like Coleman have expressed concerns about the effect of the ruling on women’s health — a potential preview of arguments to come as Republicans push to place the issue of abortion back before voters.

Senate President Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, said in a social media post Saturday that Amendment 3 had legalized “back-alley abortions” and that “Missouri must fight back against this attack on life and on women’s health.”

A spokesperson for Missouri Stands With Women, one of the groups that opposed last year’s Amendment 3 to enshrine reproductive freedom, raised similar safety concerns.

“The health and safety of women should never be compromised, yet unlicensed and unregulated abortion clinics prioritizing profits over safety is now being unleashed in Missouri,” Stephanie Bell said in a statement.

House Majority Leader Alex Riley, R-Springfield, expressed concern that “the court is throwing out all the health and safety measures that the Legislature has put in place.”

The office of Gov. Mike Kehoe was reviewing the decision Monday. Kehoe is a Republican opposed to abortion and has asked for more money for alternatives to abortion in his budget proposal.

Multiple proposals would place the issue of abortion back before Missouri voters as early as this year.

One plan, a resolution by state Rep. Melanie Stinnett, R-Springfield, would ask voters to only allow abortions in medical emergencies, when a fetal abnormality is detected, or in cases of rape or incest.

Planned Parenthood has long opposed what it calls “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider” or “TRAP” laws it argues are medically unnecessary and meant to impede abortion access.

In challenging the state licensing requirement, Planned Parenthood said to obtain a state abortion license, there is a requirement to perform “a medically unnecessary and invasive pelvic exam to all patients” as well as “strict hospital-like physical requirements that most health centers or doctors’ offices simply do not meet.”

Planned Parenthood said hospitals don’t need to meet the same requirements and that the licensing requirement was “facially discriminatory” under the new Amendment 3.

Jackson County Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang on Friday agreed the requirement was facially discriminatory because “it does not treat services provided in abortion facilities the same as other types of similarly situated health care, including miscarriage care.”

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Jack Suntrup and Ezra Bitterman of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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