Pro-life advocates hold signs during the 2022 March for Life in Iowa City.
By Lindsay Steele
The Catholic Messenger
Planned Parenthood recently announced plans to shut down four of its six Iowa facilities, citing funding challenges and state abortion restrictions.
The Cedar Rapids clinic is “closed until further notice,” according to the organization’s website. Clinics in Sioux City, Urbandale and Ames will close within a year. The Ames facility is the only one in Iowa that provides surgical abortion procedures. Clinics in Iowa City and Des Moines will remain open.
Planned Parenthood North Central States announced the pending closures May 23 in a press release. Iowa’s “heartbeat law” went into effect last summer, outlawing most abortions in the state when embryonic cardiac activity can be detected. Previously, abortion was legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. The affiliate also cited a federal funding freeze and proposed cuts to Medicaid and family planning programs.
Additionally, two Minnesota clinics will close. Of the remaining 15 clinics operated by Planned Parenthood North Central States, which includes Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, six will provide abortion procedures. The Planned Parenthood affiliate said it would lay off 66 employees and ask 37 additional employees to move to different clinics. The organization also said it plans to keep investing in telemedicine services. “We have been fighting to hold together an unsustainable infrastructure as the landscape shifts around us and an onslaught of attacks continues,” Ruth Richardson, the affiliate’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City is not affiliated with Planned Parenthood and will continue to provide abortion services.
Sheryl Schwager, director of Johnson County Right to Life (JCRTL), believes the closures are a step in the right direction but more work needs to be done. “While surgical abortions in Iowa have significantly decreased, more women are crossing state lines seeking abortions and receiving abortion pills by mail,” she said. The number of Iowans traveling to Nebraska and Minnesota for abortion procedures increased 159% in the first two months following Iowa’s near-total abortion ban taking effect last year, according to the Midwest Planned Parenthood affiliate. Planned Parenthood locations offer in-person and telemed services to help clients access and afford medication abortions and surgical abortions, according to its website.
Schwager is concerned about the safety of the abortion pill, especially as more women seek telemedicine abortions. A recent Ethics and Public Policy Center study of over 865,000 abortion pill patients from 2017-23 revealed that 4.7% were forced to visit an emergency room related to the abortion, more than 3.3% suffered hemorrhaging, and more than 1.3% got an infection.
Schwager said JCRTL’s outreach “will continue to focus on saving lives by educating our community about the dangers of the abortion pill, the availability of abortion pill reversal services, and community resources available to help mothers and their families thrive.”
