Planned Parenthood of Northern New England Continues to Navigate Patient Needs After Dobbs

CONCORD - The dangerous and chilling Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade continues to be felt across the country and here in northern New England. New attempts to restrict or ban abortion are happening nearly every day, making it extremely challenging to keep up with the current legality of abortion in any given state.

Statement from Kayla Montgomery, VP of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England:

“In the five weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we continue to see the fallout of this devastating and cruel decision. Our patients are scared and they’re confused. They want to know where they can still access safe and legal abortion, what longer-term birth control options are available, and out-of-state callers want to know if they will face prosecution by coming to our area for care.

At a time when our nation’s reproductive and sexual health care landscape is in chaos, it is especially cruel and irresponsible for the New Hampshire Executive Council to vote against contracts with three family planning providers that also provide abortion care - Equality Health Center, Lovering Health Center, and PPNNE. Patients need access to high quality and affordable family planning care now more than ever.”

New PPNNE Data*:

Abortion patients from banned or deeply restricted states: In the past two weeks, another 7 patients from out of our area have booked an appointment for abortion services, bringing the total to 19 since 6/24. Patients’ home states now include Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Louisiana, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas. Patients’ reasons for traveling to northern New England vary from established ties to the region, available appointments in their timeframe, and seeing our states are locations with increased safety and privacy.
Telehealth Visits for Abortion Pills: Last month, PPNNE rolled out a new program that allows patients living in our region to access abortion pills by a telehealth visit. Qualifying patients speak to one of our trained clinicians over a secure video connection and then receive their abortion medication.

Vasectomies: Requests for vasectomy appointments are on the rise again and have increased 58% in the past two weeks. This service is only available at our Burlington, VT health center.
Call Volume: The number of calls we are receiving continues to be higher than normal. Our staff answered 22% more calls in June 2022 versus June 2021. Call volume in the past two weeks was up 18% compared to the same time period last year.
Website data: Decision Day marked the largest one-day spike of organic traffic to our website ppnne.org that we’ve ever experienced. We saw increases of 450-650% in sessions, pageviews, and new users on June 24^th compared to the daily average for the first 23 days of June.

Anecdotes from Patients

A mom in her forties traveled from a banned state in the Midwest to a PPNNE health center for care. She shared that although many states where abortion remains legal were closer to her, she came to us for care because our region felt safer.
A junior in high school recently shared with us that she is re-evaluating her college choices. She no longer wants to attend a college in a state where abortion is illegal.
An upset patient called to ask if they could be prosecuted for a past abortion they had. The patient is living in our region but had an abortion in state where abortion is now illegal.
Multiple patients have called to ask if birth control is still covered by insurance.

* In order to best protect our patients’ privacy, all patient data shared is reflective of PPNNE’s three state presence of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

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About Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE) – PPNNE is the region’s largest provider of reproductive and sexual health care services, serving more than 34,000 patients annually. They have 15 health centers across Maine (4), New Hampshire (4), and Vermont (7).