Washington (AFP)

The only clinic practicing abortions in the US state of Missouri is facing an imminent threat of closure, the powerful organization Planned Parenthood, which manages the facility, said Tuesday in a context of a conservative offensive against the right to abortion in the USA.

"This is a real public health crisis and this week, Missouri will become the first state to plunge into the dark, without a health center that practices legal and secure abortions," Leana Wen, the president of the state, said in a statement. this family planning association.

Planned Parenthood plans to seize justice urgently, hoping to save St. Louis, the only health care center in the Midwest, home to six million people.

Like several conservative states, Missouri last week passed a very restrictive law on abortion, in the hope that the Supreme Court reworked by Donald Trump will reverse its historic decision to legalize abortion.

The law, which prohibits abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy, is not yet in force and is likely to be invalidated in court. It is in flagrant contradiction with the case law of the Supreme Court which allows American women to terminate their pregnancy as long as the fetus is not viable (around 24 weeks).

But the Missouri health services have imposed in parallel new conditions at the clinic of St. Louis, whose operating license expires in three days.

They refuse to renew it "unless the doctors agree to submit to inappropriate interrogation that is on the verge of harassment," according to Planned Parenthood.

They have already imposed submitting the patients to perineal examinations "intrusive and medically unnecessary," the organization adds.

Last year, the penultimate clinic of the state closed after the state had forced doctors practicing abortions to be affiliated to a hospital.

On Friday, Missouri Republican Governor Mike Parson was delighted that his state has "reached the lowest historical level of abortions, from 20,000 to 3,000 IVG per year". "By working together, we can continue to help the people of Missouri choose life," he added.

According to US media reports, Missouri had five clinics performing abortions ten years ago.

? 2019 AFP