New Planned Parenthood clinic in Pittsburg expands abortion access for patients inside and outside Kansas • Missouri Independent
PITTSBURG, Kansas – A new Planned Parenthood clinic opening Monday in southeast Kansas will be the closest abortion care facility for many people in the South and expects patients from six states – Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana – in its first five days.
Kansas saw a 369% increase in abortions in 2023, with 69% of patients coming from out of state, according to the Guttmacher Institute. At Trust Women Clinic in Wichita, which was previously the closest city for abortions in the South, 81% of patients came from out of state, with Texas being the most common home state, followed by Oklahoma.
In Texas and Oklahoma, abortion is completely banned with few exceptions. In the southern states, abortion is prohibited after six weeks. According to the National Library of Medicine, pregnant women know they are pregnant on average after 5.2 weeks if it is an intended pregnancy and after 7.2 weeks if it is an unwanted pregnancy.
The clinic in Pittsburg offers medical abortions up to the 11th week of pregnancy and surgical abortions in the 14th to 15th week of pregnancy.
However, there will be a delay before the clinic offers surgical care.
“We have highly trained staff to provide this care,” said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains. “But we also know that opening a new center here is a transition period for the community and for us, so it will likely be some time before we can provide treatment.”
Why Pittsburgh?
Wales said a key factor in choosing Pittsburg as a location was access to the southern states. And she pointed out that Kansas is already well versed in providing abortions for people from Missouri and other states. Pittsburg is about five miles from the Missouri border.
A 2018 law in Missouri banned abortions after 15 weeks, meaning Kansas had already been accepting patients from Missouri for four years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Constitution does not provide a right to abortion.
The decision to select Dobbs in 2022 felt like “dominoes falling,” Wales said.
“We are doing everything we can to meet the need,” Wales said. “But we also don’t try to hide the fact that far more people are calling than we can actually reach.”
Wales also said there is a need for Planned Parenthood’s services beyond abortion care in southeast Kansas, with patients from the Pittsburg area driving about two hours to Overland Park for care.
While more than 60% of Crawford County voters in 2020 supported Donald Trump, the president who packed the Supreme Court with anti-abortionists, they voted against the proposed constitutional amendment that would have stripped Kansas of the right to abortion.
Logan Rink, a Pittsburgh native and health manager at the Pittsburg clinic, said she has received positive feedback from the community. She said Planned Parenthood will fill needs that have not been met and the community sees it as a great resource.
Planned Parenthood’s other locations in Kansas are also often populated by anti-abortion activists who try to dissuade patients from having abortions.
Wales said Planned Parenthood typically faces protests when the organization opens a new branch, but that they “die down after a while.”
Members of the Lighthouse Church, a non-denominational anti-abortion Christian church in Pittsburgh, spoke out against the clinic at the May 28 city commission meeting.
“I know abortion is a big issue in our culture, but the reality is there are no safe abortions because you start with two lives and end with one life,” said Shawn Osbeen of Pittsburg.
Another resident, Susan Powers, also opposed the clinic but said it was “a wake-up call” for the church and community to provide more support to pregnant women.
The commissioners remained neutral regarding the opening of the clinic.
In 2009, George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions, was murdered in the lobby of his church in Wichita. Planned Parenthood has a strict security protocol and has security officers on site, but the shadow of Tiller’s death lingers.
“The topic comes up most often when we talk to potential providers or physicians who might be interested in staff positions,” Wales said. “They have questions about what the communities are like, what the protesters are like. We’re fortunate that there hasn’t been any violence like that in our health centers.”
Patients from the South
The National Library of Medicine found that people of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to have an abortion, and additional absence from work increases. For patients traveling from the south, the Pittsburg clinic is more than two hours closer than clinics in Wichita.
“If we can save two hours on the commute and then two hours on the commute home, that makes a huge difference for many of our patients,” Wales said.
Planned Parenthood provides patients with the help they need. Before Dobbs, 80 percent of patients didn’t need help, 20 percent did. Now, Wales said, the percentages have reversed and the help they provide looks “completely different.”
“So many people have to go so far from home now,” Wales said. “People might be able to get away from home for two hours, but telling patients they’re going to be away for 10 or 12 hours is impossible for many people.”
The Pittsburg location offers assistance to patients who cannot afford the ride. Kansas law allows abortions up to 22 weeks after the last menstrual period, but the Pittsburg clinic does not have the resources to perform abortions that far along. If needed, the clinic offers transportation to the Overland Park location, where abortions are performed up to 21 weeks and 6 days after the start of the pregnancy.
In Texas, people who traveled abroad for abortions were threatened with lawsuits. Those lawsuits violate the interstate commerce clause in the U.S. Constitution and may be unenforceable, but they have created a stigma, Wales said.
“It breaks my heart that patients come to us and say they didn’t tell their friends and family, even though they knew they would support their decision, because they didn’t know if it was legal in their home state to talk about leaving to seek medical care,” Wales said.
Wales sees a perception that patients believe they cannot travel or talk about abortion. They worry about what would happen to their children, their partners and their careers.
Topics to consider
Vice President Kamala Harris has made abortion access a cornerstone of her presidential campaign and, if elected, has promised to codify Roe v. Wade, which would legalize abortion nationwide.
In November, Missourians will vote on their abortion rights. Every time abortion rights have appeared on local ballots, the right to choose abortion has won.
But even if the abortion rights movement prevails in November, it would take decades for all Americans to have the right, Wales said.
There are numerous lawsuits and bills in Kansas attempting to restrict access to abortion, although Kansas residents have rejected the proposed constitutional amendment to repeal abortion rights in 2022. Planned Parenthood has fought back against these attempts.
“Kansas residents are saying we want health care to be private and not in the hands of the legislature,” Wales said. “The state passed additional requirements this year that require us to ask patients invasive and shaming questions that have nothing to do with why they are being treated or how we are treating them. And that’s why we are opposing that on behalf of our patients.”
This story was originally published by Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom partner.
