MSNBC’S Rachel Maddow highlights a new example of anti-abortion extremism in Missouri

Special Programs Abortion Rights & Reproductive Health

Written by Chenay Arberry

Published

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow highlighted a new example of anti-abortion extremism on October 31, covering reports that Missouri's health department was tracking the menstrual cycles of patients who had received reproductive health care at the state's only remaining abortion clinic. 

Hearings began earlier in the week to decide the fate of the clinic, a Planned Parenthood in St. Louis. Although abortion is already inaccessible in many places, if the clinic were forced to close, Missouri would become the first state in the nation without a functioning abortion clinic. 

In the hearings, Missouri's Department of Health and Senior Services director, Dr. Randall Williams, testified under oath that the department was tracking the menstrual cycles of patients who had received reproductive health care at the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis’ Central West End neighborhood. As reported by The Kansas City Star, Williams' tracking of patients’ menstrual cycles “helped to identify patients who had undergone failed abortions.”

During her segment, Maddow explained that this invasive tactic is just another example of anti-abortion extremism, saying Missouri is using “state regulations, under the direction of the state health director, to regulate the last clinic in the state in such a way it loses its license and is forced to close.” And she noted that to do this, “the health director there has been tracking women's periods on a computer spreadsheet as part of his government job, which means taxpayers have been paying him to do that."

From the October 31, 2019, edition of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show

RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): This week you might have seen this headline floating around. Kansas City Star headlines don't always go national, but no matter what paper it's from, no matter what part of the country it's from, a headline like this is going to go national and get some national attention.

 

As you can see, the headline there is, quote, “Missouri health director kept spreadsheet of Planned Parenthood patients' periods.” Let me read that one more time: “The Missouri health director kept a spreadsheet of women’s periods.” And if you're thinking, that can't be right, there must be some misunderstanding, maybe this is like a punctuation issue -- he’s the health director, so maybe this is something about colons, and it got typoed as semicolons and somebody made it into periods -- no, it’s nothing that. This is for real. 

In the Republican-led Missouri state government, the health director there has been tracking women's periods on a computer spreadsheet as part of his government job, which means taxpayers have been paying him to do that. Reporter Crystal Thomas from The Kansas City Star was able to get that story this week because she was in the courtroom for an ongoing hearing. It’s sort of like a court proceeding -- it's an administrative hearing that’s been going on all week. It's a hearing about the efforts of that state health director, who you see here, and the state government for which he works, their efforts to try to shut down the last remaining abortion provider in the entire state of Missouri.

The Republican-led state government in Missouri is trying to make that state the first state in America to go completely dark in terms of access to abortion. And they're doing it by trying to shut down the last clinic in the state that does abortions, which is a Planned Parenthood clinic. Abortion, of course, is legal in this country. Access to it is a constitutionally protected right in this country. But Missouri's Republican state government wants to try to find a way around that inconvenient fact. They want to try to find a way to effectively ban abortion in that state by putting every abortion provider that remains in the state out of business using state regulations. 

They want to use state regulations, under the direction of the state health director, to regulate the last clinic in the state in such a way that it loses its license and is forced to close. That's how they're trying to eliminate access to abortion for women in Missouri. And that's what these hearings have been about all week. And in the course of these hearings, the state health director confirmed that, yeah, he actually has been tracking women’s menstrual periods on a spreadsheet.