SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – This Saturday will be the first anniversary of Dobbs, the Supreme Court ruling that halted operations at abortion clinics in states where bans or restrictions went into place.
In California, where abortion is still legal, medical professionals are stepping up to meet the demand for abortion care.
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KCBS’s Raquel Maria Dillon spoke with Dr. Jennifer Kerns about the local doctors splitting their time between the Bay Area and states at the front of the abortion debate.
A few months before the Dobbs ruling, Kerns took a second job, which now sees her pull the occasional all-nighter as an ob-gyn at San Francisco General Hospital before commuting to Kansas.
“I came to the hospital this morning at 7 a.m., and my shift ends tomorrow at 7:30 a.m., and I’m going straight to the airport to catch an 8:40 a.m. flight, and I will work then for two days on Thursday and Friday in Wichita all day seeing patients for abortion,” Kerns said.
The Trust Women Clinic in Wichita has full-time staff, but its doctors fly in for just a couple of days of work per month.
It’s partially a response to the increased demand for abortions, partially because Wichita has been a hostile environment to doctors who perform them.
Last fall, a few months after the Dobbs ruling, Kansas voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have eliminated the right to an abortion there.
Now most of the clinic’s patients are from neighboring states where abortion has been severely restricted or banned.
“The majority of them are coming from either the big cities in Dallas or Houston, which are sort of five-hour or nine-hour drives,” Kerns said.
Kerns travels all day from California, where abortion is legal and available — mostly — to meet patients who’ve driven all night from Texas, where abortion is illegal after six weeks of pregnancy. She says she is often left wondering and worrying about all the women who can’t make the trip.
Last week, Kerns gave a sort of virtual Zoom tour of the Trust Women Clinic on a busy afternoon.
“Today, we've had almost 50, about evenly distributed between procedures and medication abortion,” the doctor said.
Clinic director Ashley Brink shared that with the number of patients they have, the clinic doors could be open “24-7” and they still wouldn’t “see all of the people who are needing access to abortion care.”
Brink said they’ve had to absorb the abortion demand from Texas, Oklahoma, and beyond, meaning their work is almost unending.
“There are days that we have over 15,000 incoming calls in one day. So I don't have the phone lines for 15,000 calls in an eight-hour period. I don't have the staffing,” Brink said.
Demand like this is why Kern makes her monthly trip to the Midwest, where her skills and training allow people to make their own choice.
“There are people who are making incredibly compassionate and empathic choices in their lives,” Kern said. “Many of them are doing that so that they can take better care of their existing children. Many are in situations that are unsafe. Many are just realizing that, in order to stay financially solvent and to care for the rest of their family, that this is the best path.”
The Trust Women Clinic depends almost entirely on out-of-town doctors, and its patients often rely on financial help from abortion funds. However, Brink has a message for abortion rights supporters in “sanctuary” states far from the frontlines: pay attention and prepare to scale up.
“Some of them didn't maybe take it as seriously because they're like, oh, we're good here. We have access,” Brink said. “Democrats in office… That would never happen here. But, like y'all, they're coming. They're coming for everyone. Like, get ready.”
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