The supreme court’s reversal of Roe v Wade has “broken” the abortion ecosystem in the US, according to executives of a Kansas clinic that opened just days after the landmark ruling in June.
The warning comes four days ahead of the pivotal midterm elections, in which Democrats have sought to make abortion rights a central issue.
It coincides with developments in Indiana, where a doctor who performed a legal abortion on a 10-year-old girl is suing the state’s attorney general for a “baseless” investigation of her, and Michigan, where the ex-wife of a judge who voted to block an initiative protecting access to abortion claims he paid for her to have the procedure.
In Kansas, the Planned Parenthood center has turned away about 85% of women seeking abortions, officials say, after they have been inundated with demand from patients from states where the procedure was outlawed when federal protections were removed.
The clinic opened in a working-class area of Kansas City just four days after the supreme court ruling, originally intended as a local facility to negate the need for women to travel longer distances to get an abortion.
“The ecosystem, it’s not even fragile. It’s broken,” said Emily Wales, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Great Plains.
“I think there’s a perception that if you are seeking care, you can find it somewhere. And that’s not true.”
Wales said several of her group’s clinics had extended opening hours and flown in doctors to try to keep up with demand from patients from states as distant as Texas and Louisiana, and those closer, including Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.
But only about 10%-15% of women have been able to receive an abortion at the clinics in Kansas, one of the few remaining states in the region where the procedure remains legal.
According to the #WeCount national tracking effort by the Society of Family Planning, thousands of patients have been unable to get an appointment.
The group’s report, released last month, found 6% fewer abortions were administered nationwide in August, when many of the more restrictive state bans on abortion had already taken effect, than in April.
Some states with bans saw the number of abortions drop significantly, from 2,770 in April to below 10 in August in one, while those that still permit the procedure saw numbers increase, the survey found.
In Kansas, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska and North Carolina, there were 30% more abortions in August than in April, and in Illinois the figure was 28% greater.
Overall, the group says, the lives of 10,600 women have been “turned upside down”, reaching its conclusion by comparing total abortion numbers before and after the Roe v Wade ruling.
Democrats have pushed to make the loss of abortion rights a key message of the midterms, with Joe Biden promising that if his party retained control of the House, and expanded its Senate majority, it would codify Roe v Wade protections by January.
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic former presidential nominee, reinforced the message on Thursday at a rally for the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, saying that “everything is on the line”.
She attacked the Republican party, which has floated a nationwide abortion ban if it takes control of Congress.
“They want to turn back the clock on abortion – they spent 50 years trying to make that happen,” said Clinton, speaking of the reversal of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling.
“But they want to turn back the clock on women’s rights in general – on civil rights, on voting rights, on gay rights. They are determined to exercise control over who we are, how we feel and believe and act, in ways that I thought we had long left behind.”
In Indiana, meanwhile, gynecologist Caitlin Bernard has filed a lawsuit against the state attorney general, Todd Rokita, who launched an investigation into her after she performed a legal abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio.
Dr Bernard claims Rokita’s scrutiny has been “overbroad” for attempting to subpoena her patient’s private medical records, and that his investigation was based on “frivolous” consumer complaints against her.
Despite Bernard reporting the procedure according to state laws, Rokita has accused her of being “an abortion activist acting as a doctor”.
In Michigan, the state supreme court judge Brian Zahra has been accused of hypocrisy by his former wife, Alyssa Jones, NBC reports.
Zahra voted in September to block a ballot initiative that would have given voters the right to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Almost four decades earlier, he arranged and paid for a procedure for Jones, his college girlfriend whom he later married, she claims.
