Planned Parenthood officials 'thoughtful about our next steps'

Emily Younker, The Joplin Globe, Mo.
·2 min read

Oct. 4—Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, which oversees the clinic in Joplin, soon will launch a mobile clinic that will travel the Missouri border with Illinois, where abortion remains legal, to offer services to patients seeking the procedure.

Could the same thing happen along the Missouri border with Kansas, just a few miles from the Joplin area and where abortion also is not prohibited?

Officials with Planned Parenthood Great Plains said Monday that although they don't have plans for a mobile unit, they are considering what they might offer next in Kansas to patients, including those who travel from outside the state, who seek abortion care.

"In this moment, where people across this region of the country have fewer rights than their neighbors, we are being very thoughtful about our next steps in meeting patient needs," said Anamarie Rebori Simmons, director of communications and marketing, in an email to the Globe. "Whether that's opening another center or increasing appointment access at our current facilities, the most important thing is that we are efficiently seeing patients with the expert care they have come to expect. We recently opened a new health center in Kansas City, Kansas, which has been instrumental in increasing appointment availability for Kansans and others across the Midwest and south who are now forced to travel for care."

Planned Parenthood Great Plains, based in Overland Park, Kansas, provides health services at 11 centers across Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas, four of which offer abortion services.

Of the four states in which it operates, abortion remains legal only in Kansas. Voters in that state on Aug. 2 resoundingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have removed the right to abortion from the state constitution.

As a result, Kansas law generally allows abortion until the 22nd week of pregnancy.

In Missouri, abortion became outlawed in almost all circumstances the day that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion. Abortion also is banned except in the cases of medical emergency in Oklahoma and Arkansas, and Planned Parenthood Great Plains has ceased abortion services in all three states.