To boost access to abortion throughout the Midwest and in Missouri, where the procedure is almost entirely banned, Planned Parenthood is launching a mobile clinic across the state line in southern Illinois.
The mobile clinic will be part of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis and Southwestern Missouri area and will provide medical abortions up to 11 weeks gestation. It is expected to launch later this year.
Abortion Clinics on Wheels began to take off across the countryand this mobile unit will be the first in the Planned Parenthood network, said Yamelsie Rodríguez, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis and Southwest Missouri Region.
In the coming weeks, Planned Parenthood will also take over the location of Tri-Rivers Family Planning, a Title X Health Center in Rolla, which recently closed. It provided contraceptives, pregnancy tests and additional reproductive health services to residents of central Missouri.
Dual initiatives are two parts of Planned Parenthood’s strategic plan to strengthen access to abortion and reproductive health care following the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
“We are doubling down on our commitment to expanding access to family planning in the state of Missouri,” Rodríguez said, “as we continue to work tirelessly to rebuild abortion access in the state.”
The mobile clinic will have two fully functional examination rooms, a laboratory and ultrasound machines. The unit will be built with the ability to also offer procedural abortions, which may be offered later, Rodríguez said.
Although exact routes for the mobile unit have not been finalized, the 37-foot-long, 8-foot-wide RV will aim to both reduce the miles patients travel for treatment while relieving pressure. about Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinic in Fairview Heights, Illinois — just across the border from Missouri.
The surge in patients traveling to what has become an abortion safe haven in southern Illinois “occurred virtually overnight” after Roe v. Wade at the end of June, Rodríguez said.
Request for assistance with transportation, accommodation and financial assistance received by Fairview Heights Regional Logistics Center more than doubled in the first two months following the Supreme Court ruling, Rodríguez said, and come from virtually every state where abortion has been restricted.
In Missouri, state trigger law bans nearly all abortions the day Roe v. Wade was canceled and where Planned Parenthood — previously the state’s last abortion provider — ceased all abortion services. Most abortions are banned in at least 14 states, with bans blocked by the courts in nine states, according to the New York Times.
Planned parenthood has extended its hours at his Fairview Heights clinic 10 hours a day, six days a week, with appointments also offered one to two Sundays a month. Having appointments seven days a week is the next goal.
The crushing demand and the long distances patients are now forced to travel to access the procedure means Planned Parenthood is seeing an increase in demand for abortions later in pregnancy, said Colleen McNicholas, Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri’s chief medical officer.
“So as the number and demand for procedural abortions, especially in the second trimester, increases,” McNicholas said, “it’s going to be really critical for us to be able to redistribute some of the demand for medical abortion – a service we know is completely safe to offer bricks and mortar outdoors, either via telehealth or mobile care.
Planned Parenthood has stopped offering medical abortions, which are usually induced by a two-pill regimen, in Missouri in 2019 after the state mandated pelvic exams for patients which McNicholas said were “really, really a violation of our medical ethics to continue to provide this service under these conditions”.
In Illinois, Planned Parenthood has provided medical abortions through telehealth — an avenue banned in Missouri — and can ship the pills to patients. Prior to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, more than 60% of people seeking abortions nationwide at Planned Parenthood health centers have sought medical abortions, Rodríguez said.
“We will continue to show ourselves”
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, confusion swirled.
A hospital system in Kansas City temporarily stopped providing emergency contraceptionciting ambiguity in state trigger law, and Missouri doctors shared fears of potentially fatal delays in care due to doctors’ fears of being prosecuted under the law.
That’s when Tri-Rivers Family Planning in Rolla started getting calls from patients worried about having to remove their intrauterine devices and seeking advice to eliminate misinformation about whether their control of births was now illegal.
“We still have people telling us that’s why they get these longer-acting methods,” of birth control, said Hailey Kramer, Tri-River’s chief nurse practitioner. “Because they don’t want to get pregnant these days.”
Many Tri-River patients are low-income and lack health insurance, and the clinic will be the Planned Parenthood affiliate’s first rural site in the state, where access to health care – and reproductive health care in particular — can be especially difficult to reach in the face of long distances, financial barriers, stigma and more.
Rodríguez said it’s part of Planned Parenthood’s commitment to reach into communities that need more reproductive health care and continue to make abortion accessible — even as it faces losses. more than $600,000 a year because of restricted state Medicaid payments. Planned parenthood the lawsuit against the state for the restricted payments is ongoing.
“We’re going to keep showing up,” McNicholas said. “And whether it takes a month, a year, or 10 years, we will fight to regain equitable access to all reproductive health care, including abortion in the state of Missouri.”
