In a first for Planned Parenthood, the abortion giant is opening a mobile clinic to “roam the southern Illinois border” and undercut nearby states with pro-life laws, the organization’s Bonyen Lee-Gilmore told PBS NewsHour on Tuesday.
“The mobile abortion clinic is a health care tool. It is also a symbol of our act of defiance in a post-Roe era,” said Lee-Gilmore, who works as vice president of strategy and communications at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri.
The mobile clinic is expected to open later this year, with Planned Parenthood hoping to perform abortions on women from nearby states with pro-life laws like Missouri. The organization announced the creation of the mobile “clinic” in October of 2022, NPR reporting at the time that Planned Parenthood will “take abortion to red-state borders” in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade and return the issue of abortion to individual states.
When the mobile clinic opens, it will begin by distributing medication abortion and will later offer surgical abortions, according to PBS NewsHour.
“The mobile clinic didn’t just magically exist overnight – we had been planning for a post-Roe reality for many years, to be honest,” Lee-Gilmore noted.
FILE – Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, sits in a surgical room on April 11, 2022, at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairview Heights, Ill. Midwestern Planned Parenthood officials on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022, announced plans for a mobile abortion clinic — a 37-foot RV that will stay in Illinois but travel to near the border of adjoining states that have banned the procedure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year. (AP Photo/Martha Irvine, File)
After announcing the plan in October, Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri claimed that its Fairview Heights center “saw a 340 percent increase in patients from outside the Missouri and Illinois bi-state area” following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the report states.
“Patient wait times at the center, located across the Mississippi River in Illinois, increased from four days to two weeks, furthering the need for expanded care that Lee-Gilmore noted had been a part of the planning for some time,” the report continues.
Soon after the October announcement, Students for Life of America (SFLA), a pro-life organization, slammed the plan and called the mobile abortion clinic “the Death-Mobile.”
SFLA’S Caroline Wharton wrote in part:
As if abortion wasn’t horrific enough already, Planned Parenthood has decided to one-up themselves in poor decision-making and put abortion on demand in a van — because that seems safe, sanitary, and not at all creepy, right? Don’t worry; if your mind immediately went to dirty street food trucks and white vans handing out candy to children, we’re right there with you; the thought of this makes us shudder….
Since the purpose of the vehicle is to distribute life-ending Chemical Abortion pills, a more apt name might be “the Death-Mobile” — but a van with its purpose by any other name would still be just as evil.
National Field Director Reagan Barklage spoke to NPR reporter Sarah McCammon on the topic, stating that she would like to see policymakers somehow keep patients in pro-life states from seeking abortions elsewhere.
“I know there’s legislators that are working on bills that would prevent women from crossing state lines. They’re trying to come up with different strategies to work on that and also ways that they can prevent women from buying [Chemical Abortion pills] online,” Barklage said.