This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A judge has issued an order allowing Missouri’s only abortion clinic to continue to provide the service, just hours before the St Louis Planned Parenthood clinic’s license to perform abortions was set to expire.

Planned Parenthood supporters gathered outside the clinic breathed a sigh of relief after the ruling from circuit judge Michael Stelzer. He issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting Missouri from allowing the license to lapse.

The threat to abortion services in Missouri came amid a growing push against women’s reproductive rights in the US, fuelled by rightwing Christians emboldened by the Trump presidency.

If the license had lapsed, Missouri would have become the first state without an abortion clinic since the landmark US supreme court’s 1973 decision legalizing abortion nationwide, known as Roe v Wade.

“Today is a victory for women across Missouri, but this fight is far from over,” Planned Parenthood’s president, Leana Wen, said in a statement. “We have seen just how vulnerable access to abortion care is here – and in the rest of the country.

“We are glad that the governor has been prevented from putting women’s health and lives in danger – for now – and call on him to stop this egregious politicalization of public health in an attempt to ban all safe, legal abortion care in the state.”

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The Missouri department of health and senior services had declined to renew the license. It cited alleged concerns with “failed abortions”, compromised patient safety and legal violations at the clinic.

The health department is demanding interviews with all seven physicians practicing at the clinic, including trainees. Planned Parenthood, which already agreed to perform additional medically unnecessary pelvic exams on its patients before an abortion, has called the demands “harassment” and an attempt to intimidate providers.

Two-thirds of Americans support Roe v Wade, which ensures that abortion remains legal in all 50 US states, but that has not always meant it is accessible.

Several US states, including Missouri, have recently passed legislation which would severely limit access to abortion if enacted. Missouri has already imposed severe regulations on abortion clinics, driving four clinics out of business since 2008.

Earlier this month, Alabama’s Republican-controlled state senate passed a near-total ban on abortion, which would make it a crime to perform the procedure at any stage of pregnancy.

Speaking before the ruling, Wen told the Guardian that women’s healthcare is in a “state of emergency” in the United States.

“This is a terrifying time,” Wen said. “We have a situation not unlike a natural disaster, where people’s lives are in danger. Except this is manmade.”

Before the judge in Missouri ruled Friday, more than 20 patients at the center had been in limbo, unsure if they would be able to obtain the abortions they had been scheduled for.

The patients had already received the medically unnecessary pelvic exam. The women were also waiting through a medically unnecessary 72-hour holding period, enacted in 2014.

“Yesterday was the worst day of my practice of medicine,” said Dr David Eisenberg. State orders to perform medically unnecessary and unethical pelvic exams even as he was unsure whether he would be able to later help the women terminate their pregnancies made him “an instrument of abuse”, he said.

“That’s incredibly egregious,” he added. “I said, ‘I’m sorry’ so many times it should have been written on my forehead.”

But women “are willing to walk through fire” for what they believe is right for their families, Eisenberg said before a crowd of cheering supporters. Most women who obtain abortions are already mothers. One in four women will have an abortion in her life.

Eisenberg called on voters to push the issue with legislators, rather than look at courts as the “last resort”.

Supporters outside the clinic were only cautiously optimistic. In a state with 1.1 million women of reproductive age and the highest ratio of women to an abortion clinic in the country, the solution still felt rocky.

“It’s not necessarily what we wanted,” said Bridget Bailey, a 34-year-old woman from St. Louis, adding that she believed the state’s investigation was a “technique” to shut down the clinic.

The judge will again consider the clinic’s fate on Tuesday, as he hears arguments for a preliminary injunction, a stronger stay than the clinic already has on the expiration of its license. The judge is unlikely to rule the same day, so uncertainty will likely continue for the clinic.

Nevertheless, leaders, supporters, doctors and even cars passing by honking their horns in support were defiant. A banner hung on the side of the building reading: “STILL HERE”.

Agencies contributed to this report