Planned Parenthood builds secret 'mega-clinic' by state border to combat Missouri abortion law

Facility is just 13 miles away from the last abortion clinic in Missouri

The existing Planned Parenthood facility in Missouri (AP)

Planned Parenthood has announced it is opening a new 18,000 square-foot clinic that it secretly built in southern Illinois, just miles away from the last remaining abortion clinic in Missouri.

The chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of the St Louis Region and Southwest Missouri said the secret construction was necessary to avoid protests and construction delays.

“We were really intentional and thoughtful about making sure that we were able to complete this project as expeditiously as possible because we saw the writing on the wall — patients need better access, so we wanted to get it open as quickly as we could,” Colleen McNicholas, the chief medical officer, told CBS News.

The new facility comes as Missouri has cracked down on legal abortion services, including an attack on the last remaining facility in St Louis that officials in the state have refused to re-license.

The effort in Missouri is just one of many assaults on abortion access in the United States, with several states having passed so-called “heartbeat” abortion bans just this year. Those laws severely limit the time period in which a woman can seek an abortion, often before they are even aware of the pregnancy.

Many have argued in response to those laws that they effectively ban the procedure entirely.

In Illinois, however, lawmakers have taken a drastically different approach, paving the way for the new secret facility to be built.

Earlier this year, the state passed the Reproductive Health Act, which established access to abortion as a fundamental human right.