In the central Oregon city of Bend, the only Planned Parenthood clinic serving the eastern half of the state is bracing for an influx of patients, particularly from neighboring Idaho, where a law is expected to go into effect to ban most abortions this summer.
“We’ve already started hiring,” said Joanna Dennis-Cook, Manager of the Bend Health Center.
Across the western US, many abortion providers serving rural areas were already struggling to meet demand in a vast region where staff shortages and long travel distances are barriers to reproductive services for women. women. Oregon alone is larger geographically than the entire United Kingdom.
Some facilities serving rural communities in states where abortion remains legal fear that those pre-existing challenges could be compounded by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as more patients travel from states where the procedure is banned or heavily restricted.
In anticipation of Idaho’s abortion ban, Oregon lawmakers earlier this year created a $15 million fund to increase access to abortion services.
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Northwest Abortion Access Fund, a nonprofit organization that helps patients pay for the trip and the procedure itself, received the first million dollars. NWAAF has worked with the Bend clinic for 20 years and they are collaborating to meet the needs of a growing number of patients.
Dennis-Cook says his clinic is providing additional training for staff and changing hours “to ensure we can accommodate the increase in patient numbers” as more people travel farther for care.
Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 20 percent of American women already had to travel at least 42 miles to get to the nearest abortion clinic, according to 2014 data analyzed by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, which published their findings in The Lancet Public Health. In much of eastern Oregon, that distance can increase to nearly 180 miles. As more states move to enact abortion-triggering bans, the gaps could widen further for many patients.
Dennis-Cook says the Bend health center has been receiving patients from as far away as Texas.
The Bend clinic has six exam rooms and receives about 600 visits a month. Because it’s “smaller,” Dennis-Cook said it’s “limited” in what it can provide.
“Here we only do first-trimester procedures,” he explained. He added that the clinic cannot perform procedures that involve general anesthesia. “We don’t have a plethora of nurses who can do that kind of work to draw from.”
Smaller abortion clinics, particularly those in rural areas, have historically dealt with a shortage of staff and doctors who can perform the procedure. This in turn affects the availability of programming.
Amid growing demand for travel funding, the NWAAF has already exhausted its planned operating budgets for this year, according to Riley Keane, the group’s practical support leader.
“Last year we gave away about $1 million in total,” Keane explained, referring to grants given to clinics to cover abortion costs and travel funds provided to patients. She said this year the NWAAF is “on track to potentially double that.”
Keane hopes the $1 million from Oregon’s new abortion access fund will make “a big difference” for the NWAAF, which normally relies on individual donors. She says this year marks the first time the group has received government money.
NWAAF says it is concerned about providing travel funding to patients in states where abortion is banned or highly restricted, but added that it is working with legal professionals to assess the changing landscape.
“They keep us up to date on things that we need to be concerned about,” Keane said.
In response to laws such as those passed in Texas that allow individuals to sue abortion providers, the governors of Oregon, Washington, and California announced a joint commitment to protect patients and physicians “against local law enforcement and judicial cooperation with investigations.” Out of state”. , investigations and arrests.
The three Democratic governors also said they will reject the “extradition of individuals for criminal prosecution” for receiving or supporting abortion services that are legal in their states.
The NWAAF’s service region includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska.
Keane says that the NWAAF will continue their work for now. “Currently, we have not been told by our legal advisors that we should stop operating,” he said.
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