PITTSBURG — A new Planned Parenthood clinic in southeast Kansas will be the closest abortion access point for many people in the South and will provide easier access to reproductive health care for southeast Kansans who previously had to travel to Overland Park.
The center, which opened Monday in Pittsburg, expects to have patients from six states in its first five days — Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana.
Kansas saw a 369% increase in abortions in 2023, with 69% of patients coming from out of state, according to the Guttmacher Institute. For the Trust Women Clinic in Wichita, which was previously the closest city for abortion access for Southern states, 81% of patients were from out of state, with Texas the most common homestate, followed by Oklahoma.
Texas and Oklahoma have total abortion bans, with few exceptions. Southern states have six-week abortion bans. On average, pregnant people know they are pregnant after 5.2 weeks for intendent pregnancies and 7.2 weeks for unintended pregnancies, the National Library of Medicine found.
The Pittsburg clinic will offer medication abortions for up to 11 weeks of pregnancy, and surgical abortions for 14-15 weeks of pregnancy.
But, there will be a delay before the clinic offers surgical care.
“We have excellent trained staff to offer this care,” said Planned Parenthood Great Plains president and CEO Emily Wales. “But we also know it’s a transition for the community and for us to launch a new center here, so it’ll probably be a little bit of time before we’re offering procedural care.”
Why Pittsburg?
Wales said a key factor in the Pittsburg location was access to Southern states.
And she pointed out that Kansas already is well versed in providing abortion care to people from Missouri and other states. Pittsburg is about five miles from the Missouri border.
A 2018 law in Missouri banned abortion after 15 weeks, meaning Kansas had been absorbing Missouri patients for four years before the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.
The 2022 Dobbs decision felt like “dominos falling,” Wales said.
“We are doing everything we can to meet the need,” Wales said. “But we’re also not trying to hide the fact that there are far more people calling than we can actually get in.”
Wales also said there was a need for the services Planned Parenthood offers — which go beyond abortion care — in southeast Kansas. Patients from the Pittsburg area were traveling roughly two hours to Overland Park to receive care.
While more than 60% of Crawford County voters in 2020 supported Donald Trump, the president who packed the Supreme Court with anti-abortion justices, they voted against the proposed constitutional amendment that would have removed the right to terminate a pregnancy in Kansas.
