June 24 marks two years since the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, striking down the nearly 50-year precedent set by Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S.
Now, abortion access is a patchwork across the country, with each state issuing its own regulations or bans.
Clinics in states where abortion remains legal, such as Washington, have seen a massive increase in out-of-state patients since the decision, especially ones near their borders with states with much more stringent abortion laws, such as Idaho.
The U.S. Supreme Court still has not issued a ruling on a case about whether a state may ban abortion if the patient’s health, but not their life, is in grave danger. That's the case in Idaho, where a woman's life is the sole exception in the state's abortion ban, but not rape, incest, or the mother's health.
SPR’s Owen Henderson spoke with Marisol Viveros, Planned Parenthood’s regional director of clinical services for the Tri-Cities area, about how the clinics she serves have fared in the years since the Dobbs ruling.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: So, as you think about the last two years since the Dobbs decision, give me the 30,000-foot view. How have things changed at the clinics that you serve?
MARISOL VIVEROS: What has changed for the clinics that I have served is, I would have to say, the increase of patients that we saw for our services. And it just would slowly grow a little bit more, a little bit more.
We're starting to see patients from outside our normal areas of Oregon and, well, of course, Idaho, since it's just right next to us. And we're just figuring out different ways to keep up with the demand and keeping that availability for our patients for all the sites around this area.
OH: What does the data show about the patients that your clinics see? Do we know where they're from?
MV: I know we've seen quite a few patients coming out from a little bit past Oregon, California.
We've seen them come through Texas. We've had a couple of patients come out this far. And with some of the patients that I had the opportunity to speak with, is they just felt safer to be able to travel further away from the banned states, to be able to provide the service that they needed for their own health.
And some of them have family out in this area, and they would use that as a reason to be able to support their own decisions on being able to be seen so far away from home.
OH: I know for some patients, there's confusion about whether they can still be punished for an abortion if they get it out of state. How is that affecting appointments?
MV: We have seen some of those similar things in our clinics as well, just because they are afraid of the potential consequences of the services that they come with us for. And we will do our best to make them feel as safe as possible for their service.
OH: And for patients who are actually from Washington, how has the increase in out-of-state patients affected their ability to get appointments?
MV: Since we knew that this was going on and there was a possibility of it being overturned, we were already preparing for this. So, in order to prevent that delay of being able to provide care for our patients here in Washington, so we were already planning ahead on how to add additional services for days, how to add last-minute days to be able to provide patients for walk-ins if they came in for a different service and they turned out and had a positive pregnancy test and they were thinking of terminating, we would be able to try and see them that same day.
So, we had already planned ahead of time on how to be able to continue the support with the sudden demand that can occur.
OH: And speaking personally, how have the last two years been for you?
MV: For the last two years for me, I would say when we heard the overturn at that time, I was the health center manager for here in Kennewick. So, I was very, very much preparing for that impact of how that was going to impact not just the area that I live in, but how that was going to impact my team.
And my team is really important to me because they help keep our doors open and our patients happy with the services that we can provide for them. So, I think for me, it was really hard to struggle a little bit in the beginning of trying to figure out different patterns, different stoppings to be able to do the services that we wanted for our patients.
But in the end, I think that the sweat that we did was very well worth it because I've heard beautiful stories from patients that have traveled many, many miles to come and see us and be grateful for the services that we can still provide for them.
And that helps my motivation on being able to provide all of these services for patients. I've had patients that have had very difficult living situations. We have patients that are homeless and they've come from out of state and they have family here.
They came to visit and they know their current circumstances. They know their current living situations and they know by continuing the pregnancy, it would have made their lives a lot more difficult. This patient had expressed to me some mental disabilities that they knew would be a hardship on parenting.
And they were grateful that we were able to see this patient along with being able to find funding to actually cover the full service for this patient. And they had no cost for them as we were able to cover not just the initial visit, but the follow-up visit as well and along with some transportation.
OH: Marisol Viveros is a Regional Director of Clinical Health Services for Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho. Marisol, thank you so much for joining me.
MV: Of course, not a problem. Thank you so much for reaching out.
