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Wyoming no longer has a clinic offering procedural abortions. Now, patients are traveling hundreds more miles to neighboring states for care.
The women’s health clinic in Casper, Wellspring Health Access, has served patients from across Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho and 16 other states.
A new state law, pushed by abortion opponents, placed strict requirements on the clinic, including getting its physicians admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and making extensive renovations.
It couldn’t immediately meet those requirements, so it shut down. It reopened again to patients seeking other kinds of services last week, but still can’t provide procedural abortions.
“It’s definitely deflating,” said Julie Burkhart, who leads Wellspring.
Since the law passed last month, Burkhart said it turned away 80 patients seeking abortions and 29 seeking other types of care. It’s referring abortion patients to Colorado, Montana or Utah. That includes the clinics that are part of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.
“It has a chilling impact, not only for Wyoming, but across the country,” said Adrienne Mansanares, the president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.
She said clinics in Greeley and Fort Collins in northern Colorado have seen a surge since the Wyoming law passed about a month ago.
From February to March, the number of Wyoming patients increased by almost 50% (from 23 to 34), and almost ten more patients came from South Dakota (from 4 to 13), who would otherwise travel to Wyoming.
Mansanares said the clinics were prepared to meet the demand.
“They will move mountains to be able to see patients who are traveling from Wyoming, South Dakota,” she said. “Those are very long distances. The drives can be treacherous, especially with spring storms coming.”
On April 8 at 1:30 p.m., the Natrona County district court will consider temporarily halting the Wyoming law that requires renovations. It’ll also consider blocking another new law, which requires pregnant people get a transvaginal ultrasound two days before taking abortion pills.
Abortion remains legal in Wyoming, though access is limited.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
