A new abortion clinic will open this fall in southeastern Kansas, cementing the state’s role as a regional hub for reproductive health care services, access to which its neighbors have severely restricted since U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade destroyed.
Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains announced Tuesday that Pittsburg, Kansas, will be home to a new facility that will provide abortion procedures and pills, as well as pregnancy services, contraception and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.
After the Roe reversal, Kansas became the first state where voters spoke out on abortion at the ballot box, decisively rejecting a constitutional amendment that could have led to an abortion ban in August 2022.
Since then, the state — which bans abortions after 21 weeks of pregnancy — has become a destination for people from more restrictive nearby states seeking abortions.
In March 2023, 44% of abortion patients at Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas traveled more than 250 miles (402 kilometers), compared to just 1% two years earlier, the organization said. More than half of abortion patients now come from Texas, and some have come from as far away as Florida in recent weeks, said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains.
“You walk across the state line from Missouri into Kansas and you automatically become a freer person who can actually take care of your medical needs in a different way,” Wales said. “We see it on the faces of patients who literally breathe easier when they come into Kansas.”
The abortion landscape in the US is in flux following the June 2022 Supreme Court decision that revoked the constitutional right to abortion nationwide.
New bans or restrictions have gone into effect in most Republican-led states, including 14 where abortion is now banned at all stages of pregnancy, with few exceptions, and three more where it is banned after about six weeks of pregnancy – often before women are aware of it. am pregnant.
For people from those states who want to end their pregnancies, the main options are obtaining abortion pills through telehealth or underground networks, or traveling abroad for abortion pills or procedures.
There were about as many in-state residents as out-of-state residents seeking abortions in Kansas in the years before the Supreme Court ruling, according to statistics reported to and published by the state health department. That’s largely because Kansas City, Kansas, is easily accessible from Missouri, which has historically been limited in offering abortion services.
In 2022, the number of out-of-state residents who received consent forms more than doubled to 8,475, state data show.
Pittsburg, Kansas, is located 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of Kansas City and 150 miles (241 kilometers) east of Wichita. That means the new clinic location will be hours closer to patients who may be traveling from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma — and even as far away as Louisiana or Texas — where the procedure is limited.
Pittsburg itself has a shortage of providers of contraception and other sexual health care services, Wales said, but it has the “added advantage of being so close to neighboring states.” The Pittsburg location will also later offer gender-affirming services.
Clinics are also changing to accommodate out-of-state demand. New Mexico has committed $10 million to a new facility in Las Cruces, near the Texas border; last year a clinic opened in Western Maryland, a few miles from West Virginia; and two new clinics have opened in the southern Illinois city of Carbondale.
Ingrid Duran, director of state legislation for National Right to Life, said it’s not surprising that new clinics are popping up to meet out-of-state demand because of the financial options for providers, she said.
“And it’s not surprising to know that people who want an abortion would leave the state if it wasn’t offered there,” she said. She said states should also offer resources that “hopefully convince women who are pro-abortion to choose something else.”
Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College who researches abortion policy, said she opened 78 abortion facilities in the U.S. between May 1, 2022, and April 1 of this year. That number includes 10 who moved from another location in the same state, seven who moved across state lines and 61 new providers.
The growth in the number of providers near state lines has led to new efforts by those opposed to abortion to restrict the practice, calling it “abortion trafficking.”
A Texas man is trying to force his former partner to reveal who helped her obtain an out-of-state abortion in a step toward civil enforcement of Texas’ abortion ban.
Lawmakers in at least two states have targeted people who help minors access abortions without parental consent. Tennessee lawmakers last month passed a bill that would make it illegal to help minors obtain abortions without parental consent; Republican Gov. Bill Lee has yet to take action on it. Idaho passed a similar law last year, although a federal judge has blocked enforcement while questioning its constitutionality.
Kansas’ Democratic Governor Laura Kelly is a strong supporter of abortion rights, but the Republican Party-controlled legislature has a veto-proof majority and strong anti-abortion contingents.
This year, the Legislature passed bills — and later overrode Kelly’s vetoes — statutes that would require abortion providers to ask patients why they are terminating their pregnancies and report the answers to the state, making it a specific crime to kill someone to force a pregnancy. have an abortion.
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Fingerhut reported from Oakland, New Jersey, and Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.