Planned Parenthood opens new clinic – in first state to ban abortion after ‘Roe’ fall

Cori Bush was about 100 miles southwest of her St. Louis congressional district in the town of Rolla, campaigning not for her own re-election, which is virtually guaranteed, but for abortion rights. “They celebrated because this state was the first,” she told a crowd of abortion rights supporters and activists under a picnic pavilion. Missouri was first state to ban abortion after Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade June 24. But, she added, “we are the ones who are left to organize, to galvanize, it is we who must mobilize the community and make sure that they know that not only are we fighting and defending, we are defend our children’s children. Nestled midway between the cities of St. Louis and Springfield, the town of 20,000 is one of the final stops on Bush’s “Roe the Vote: Reproductive Freedom Tour,” an eight-stop campaign to get the vote that ended a month before the midterms. It’s also kind of ground zero for the next chapter in the fight to retain and restore access to reproductive health services and rights in the United States.

On November 1, Planned Parenthood will open the doors to a new clinic, one of the first physical clinics to open after the fall of deer— and he opens at Rolla. For now, it cannot provide abortions but will offer basic primary and preventive care, such as permanent sterilization and contraceptive services. It’s part of a long-term strategy to close the ever-widening reproductive care gap between “heaven” states and abortion-restrictive states, and to expand Planned Parenthood’s footprint in the Missouri instead of dissolving it. “Missouri has long been a state that has abdicated its responsibility to its constituents and covers all sexual and reproductive health care,” said Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis area and from southwest Missouri to St. Louis. , said. McNicholas said she would have described Missouri “as existing in a post-deer reality” even before the Dobbs decision, as elected and elected officials have undermined reproductive rights and access for decades. As of 2018, there had been only one abortion clinic in Missouri — the Planned Parenthood Clinic in St. Louis — where 17-year-old Bush had an abortion after becoming pregnant at following a sexual assault.

This is now the story in many states across the country where women’s health clinics have been forced to close as states pass more restrictions on abortion. In the first 100 days following the Dobbs decision, more than two dozen abortion clinics closed completely and 40 more clinics stopped providing abortion services, according to an analysis released earlier this month by the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports sexual and reproductive health. Fourteen states are now short of abortion providers. Without these clinics, many of which provided a range of non-abortion reproductive health services, including testing for sexually transmitted infections and pap smears, women in the most abortion-restrictive states are left with fewer places to receive basic reproductive care. A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood was unable to articulate a national strategy at this time to expand clinics in states restricting abortion, but said conversations about opening new facilities were happening at the state level. ‘State. A new Planned Parenthood clinic opened in Kansas in October. In Missouri, the decision to open in Rolla was made to continue access to reproductive health care “regardless of state policy,” said Julie Lynn, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri. Yet it is difficult to disentangle her openness from the political climate around women’s reproductive rights.