Photo: Sarah McCammon/NPR
Planned Parenthood is preparing to for the launch of its mobile clinic, that will soon offer abortion pills to patients with limited access due to state bans following theoverturn ofRoe v. Wade.
Themobile clinic— which is set up inside of an RV — arrived in southern Illinois this week ahead of its upcoming launch, hoping to significantly cut down the travel time for patients.
“The biggest needs that we are seeing is the fact that they have to travel so far to get the care that they need,” LaQuetta Cooper, health care operations director for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, toldNPR. “This will be helpful so they don’t have to travel three to five hours.”
Sarah McCammon/NPR
Last month, Planned Parenthood first announced that it would be launching the mobile clinic in southern Illinois due to the growing number of patients within states that have implemented abortion bans.
The organization’s Fairview Heights clinic saw a 340 percent increase in patients after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“Our goal is to reduce the hundreds of miles that people are having to travel now in order to access care… and meet them where they are,” Yamelsie Rodriguez, president of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, told NPR at the time.
The clinic will be operating in Illinois — where abortion remains legal — and travel along the borders of neighboring states that prohibit or restrict abortion services. Rodriguez added that it “gives us a lot of flexibility about where to be.”
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Preparation for the mobile clinic comes just as a recent study revealed that one in three women of reproductive age in the United States now live over an hour away from an abortion clinic.
On Tuesday, theJournal of the American Medical Associationpublished a peer reviewed study analyzing census data from nearly 64 million women between ages 15 and 44 in the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.
Researchers found that women seeking abortion services had to travel more than 100 minutes to reach a legal clinic. Prior to the end of Roe, the average travel time to the nearest abortion clinic was reportedly less than 30 minutes.
source: people.com
