While the Supreme Court decision has changed the abortion landscape dramatically across the nation, few states have been as affected as Minnesota, which has become an island of access in an increasingly restrictive Upper Midwest.
The Whole Woman’ s Health of Minnesota clinic, which opened to patients in February, provides abortions in the state and is located just a few minutes from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Neighboring Wisconsin, which had four clinics providing abortions before Dobbs, now has none. Among other bordering states, South Dakota has adopted some of the most restrictive abortion policies in the nation, and Iowa is expected to follow.Abortions in Illinois for out-of-state patients have skyrocketed. And some wait times are exceeding three weeksMinnesota clinics report a surge in patients from not only neighboring states but also from as far away as Texas.
In the first 100 days after Roe was overturned, 66 health clinics in 15 states stopped providing abortion care, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Fourteen of those states had accounted for more than 125,000 abortions in 2020, it said. Another metro-area clinic, run by Whole Woman’s Health, opened in February and is 10 minutes from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. That clinic has seen a 50% increase in patients, said Sean Mehl, associate director of clinical services for the nonprofit, which also has clinics performing abortions in Indiana, Maryland and Virginia.While the clinics have increased staffing, the effects of the Dobbs decision extend beyond the number of patients seeking care.
Some clinics in Minnesota’s northern areas, which are more remote with limited flights in and out, have not seen a large influx of out-of-state patients. In the first month after the Dobbs decision, Planned Parenthood clinics in Illinois saw 350 patients from Wisconsin, 10 times the usual number, Dr. Kathy King, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin’s medical director, told NPR. That figure did not include Wisconsin patients at non-Planned Parenthood clinics.
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