ABORTION CLINICS SEE MORE PATIENTS FROM OUT OF STATE
Colorado is seen as “this safe haven of care for women in surrounding states”
It’s not unusual to see a parking lot full of out-of-state license plates on any given morning at the Planned Parenthood clinics near Colorado’s northern and southern borders.
“They travel through the evening to get there,” said Adrienne Mansanares, the chief experience officer for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.
Colorado is one of seven states that doesn’t restrict access to abortion at any stage of pregnancy. That sets the state apart from its neighbors, where a variety of state laws have restricted access to the procedure and led to widespread clinic closures — particularly in Texas.
Colorado clinics saw women from 34 states in 2018, and Mansanares expects that one in 10 patients seeking an abortion through her nonprofit’s clinics in 2019 will drive or fly across state lines for their appointments. That percentage grows to more than a quarter of all abortions performed at the Fort Collins location and more than 40 percent in Durango.
“We really are this safe haven of care for women in surrounding states,” Mansanares said.
And for the first time in nearly a decade, she and the other executives of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains are considering opening new clinics and expanding the services they offer at others just to keep up with the growing demand from women who live out of state.
“We never needed one in Grand Junction. There are providers there,” Mansanares said. “But we’re looking at how many women are coming from Utah, Arizona and Idaho.”
Utah has two clinics that perform abortions, but both are in Salt Lake City. Wyoming’s lone abortion clinic is in Jackson, and all four of Arizona’s clinics are in Phoenix, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute.
Las Cruces, N.M., which is less than an hour’s drive from El Paso, also is on the shortlist for a new clinic location.
“Of our out-of-state patients in New Mexico, 80 percent are from Texas,” Mansanares said.
The other possible change for Colorado clinics is the expansion of services for women seeking abortions later in pregnancy. Colorado Planned Parenthoods don’t perform abortions past 22 weeks, Mansanares said. One reason is that the demand for those procedures is small; half the abortions her clinics perform are what are
called “medication abortions” and occur during the first few weeks of pregnancy.
But as more states and the Trump administration push to block both access and funding, Mansanares said, the time has come to consider expanding services.
“We believe patients are going to be traveling across great distances to come to Colorado to receive that care,” she said.
Twenty-seven abortion bans have been approved across the U.S. so far this year, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Nineteen states require that abortions be performed in a hospital after a certain point, 18 prohibit abortions past 22 weeks, two ban them past 15 weeks, 18 mandate counseling about things such as the purported link between abortion and breast cancer as well as longterm mental health consequences, and 27 states have a mandatory waiting period.
“It’s just so devastating to me to think about the excess burden that is placed on folks coming from those states,” said Fawn Bolak, cofounder of Keep Abortion Safe.
That’s one of the reasons her group put up a billboard outside Grand Junction that states “Welcome to Colorado, where you can get a safe, legal abortion.”
“We were looking to highlight the burden of travel that many women face in states surrounding ours,” Bolak said.
Bolak also volunteers with the Colorado chapter of the Women’s Freedom Fund. The group provides financial and other assistance to women seeking abortions. Bolak meets women flying in from out of state at Denver International Airport and drives them to and from their appointments.
“I think there’s a level of comfort in knowing you have support in this state that you may have never been to,” Bolak said.
Those who oppose abortion for religious or moral reasons, such as state Rep. Lori Saine, R-firestone, think the rise of Colorado as a destination location for abortion is “horrifying.”
“We don’t treat war criminals the way we treat these littlest humans who feel pain,” Saine said.
And some opponents are working to stop both women in Colorado and those living in other states from seeking abortions if they’re later on in their pregnancies.
A 2020 ballot initiative is working its way through the process now that would, if passed by Colorado voters, outlaw almost all abortions past 22 weeks.
The only exception would be if a doctor decided the woman’s life was at risk, and the initiative would make it a Class 3 felony, on par with second-degree murder or vehicular homicide, to perform an abortion past 22 weeks for any other reason.
The expansion of abortion services in Colorado also comes at a time when the state’s own unplanned pregnancy and abortion rates are dropping. For example, state health officials found that the birth rate for teenagers in Colorado dropped by 57 percent and the abortion rate by 64 percent from 2009 to 2017.
The national abortion rate also has dropped to the lowest on record, according to a December 2018 report from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Mansanares pointed out that the number of women living in states with limited access to abortion is on the rise.
“We’re surrounded by a sea of states that have taken a varsity of approaches,” Mansanares said. “There’s simply an increase in people coming from out of state.”