Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas and Missouri are closing for a one week break
Planned Parenthood Great Plains will close its doors Saturday for a one-week break, a first for the organization. President Emily Wales announced the decision on Twitter Friday, saying the clinics will reopen as usual on Sept. 12.
The organization operates reproductive health care clinics in Missouri and Kansas — where it is also one of the only abortion providers — as well as in Arkansas and Oklahoma. There are five Planned Parenthood clinics in the metro, including a recently opened clinic in Kansas City, Kansas.
Wales tweeted that the one-week break will allow overworked staff to “unwind, look inward, and prepare for what’s next.” Planned Parenthood Great Plains spokesperson Anamarie Rebori-Simmons told The Star in an email that no appointments were canceled or rescheduled in order to accommodate the week off.
“We did not have to cancel appointments because we had decided on this closure before we booked appointments for this week,” she said.
The announcement comes on the heels of an intense few months for those providing reproductive health care, and specifically abortion care, in the Midwest. The reversal of Roe v. Wade removing federal abortion rights, sweeping abortion bans in Missouri and Oklahoma and a statewide vote over abortion rights in Kansas all added to the toll that Wales called “brutal for our staff.”
“Our rights – as individuals and as health care providers – have also been lost, and we have barely begun to process that,” she wrote, adding that staff have had to support many patients who were in shock.
Planned Parenthood previously told The Star that Kansas clinics had experienced an increase in call volume but did not have additional capacity to meet the need after Roe was overturned.
“The never-ending push to do more, stay later, and sacrifice personal time and self-care isn’t sustainable,” Wales wrote in her Twitter statement. “In this moment, we are heartbroken for our patients, for ourselves and our children, and for our communities.”
All Planned Parenthood clinics in the Great Plains region will observe this one-week closure, even if they do not provide abortion services, a spokesperson from Planned Parenthood confirmed on Friday.
This may make it harder to get appointments in the next week for birth control consultations, STI testing, gender-affirming care and other procedures the clinics provide.
Burnout in the healthcare industry is a widespread problem in the Kansas City area and beyond. Last week, 12 chief medical officers for local hospitals gathered for a news briefing at The University of Kansas Health System to sound the alarm about the ongoing staffing crisis.
“We are presented with a national challenge which must have national solutions,” said Dr. Kevin Dishman, the chief medical officer at Stormont Vail Hospital in Topeka. “20% of people have left the profession — that’s doctors, that’s nurses, that’s ancillary staff, that’s administrative staff. Rebuilding is going to be difficult, and we cannot do it alone.”
At the moment, Kansas is the only state in Planned Parenthood Great Plains’s coverage area where abortion remains legal. Five clinics in the state perform abortions, and three of them are located in the Kansas City area. The other two are in Wichita.
With Planned Parenthood clinics closed this upcoming week, the only abortion provider open in the Kansas City area will be the Center for Women’s Health in Overland Park. The next closest abortion provider will be Trust Women in Wichita. Here’s a list of the clinics that provide abortions within a 5-hour drive of Kansas City.
Do you have more questions about access to medical care in Kansas City? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.
This story was originally published September 2, 2022 at 4:44 PM.
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