Downstate clinics that provide abortions are bracing for an expected doubling of patients following last week’s Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said about 7,500 abortions are performed each year at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairview Heights and Hope Clinic, an independent facility about 15 miles away in Granite City.
Of the 30,000 women who are expected to travel to Illinois from other states to obtain abortions, Dr. McNicholas said about half, or 15,000, will be served by those two downstate clinics.
Dr. McNicholas said her office has been preparing for this day for some time.
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Women in Missouri, she said, have had to jump through so many hoops to get abortions in their own state that — even before last week’s Supreme Court ruling — clinics on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River have been absorbing those patients.
“What was different in the sort of minutes and hours after the decision was the phone calls I was getting from colleagues in other states, in Tennessee, in Wisconsin,” Dr. McNicholas said, “Who had people on their schedule for that day and the following day [and] now were calling to say, ‘How much space do you have? Can you open up some more appointments?’”
Dr. McNicholas said she expects to have to expand hours at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairview Heights, Illinois from 8 hours per day, six days a week to 10 – 12 hours a day and possibly remaining open on Sundays.
In a country that claims to be a leader in public health, Dr. McNicholas said it’s embarrassing that the recent Supreme Court ruling will allow half of the United States to abdicate responsibility for basic health care.
It’s a far cry from when Dr. McNicholas started performing abortions.
“When I started providing abortion care in Missouri 15 years ago, we were seeing about 6-7,000 abortion patients a year in our St. Louis clinic,” Dr. McNicholas said. “This year we will probably see no more than 100.”
The doctor said that, though the full ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision might not be known for years or even decades, she believes the decision will have devastating consequences in terms of worsening infant and mortality rates in states that forbid abortions.
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