PITTSBURG, Kan. — The Rev. Anthony Navaratnam stood before his congregation and urged them to pray for the women from surrounding states who will flock to the new abortion clinic in town that opened in August.
“God is giving us an opportunity to be missionaries in Pittsburg, Kansas,” he told those at Flag Church, which hosted a training on how to protest outside of the clinic.
The debate over reproductive rights has landed in this college town of 20,000 in the southeast corner of one of the few states left in the region still allowing abortions. It is near Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas and not terribly far from Texas.
A place this size, especially one in a historically red state, was unlikely to have an abortion clinic before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Since then, Kansas has become one of five states that people are most likely to travel to in order to get an abortion when they’re unable to at home, said Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College who researches abortion policies.
Abortions spiked in Kansas by 152% after Roe, according to a recent analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Using Myers’ count, six of the clinics in Kansas, Illinois, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia that have opened or relocated post-Roe are in communities with fewer than 25,000 people. Two others are in communities of fewer than 50,000.
“Kansas is really the only one in this region that can provide care to many people in these surrounding states,” said Kensey Wright, a member of the board of directors for the Roe Fund in Oklahoma, which supports Kansas abortion clinics through grants.
“Without abortion clinics in that state, we would be without hope,” Wright said.
Housed in a former urology office, Pittsburg’s Planned Parenthood clinic sits across the street from a medical clinic run by a Catholic health care system. Behind the clinic are houses.
Clinic manager Logan Rink said her mother used to work in this building as a nurse — a connection that’s “small-town stuff.” She loves this town, and said her neighbors agree the clinic is needed. But she was guarded in her optimism, saying ” the reception that we are going to get from the community is going to be favorable in some ways and probably not always.”
Experts said smaller-sized clinics can be less overwhelming for women who are coming from rural areas, like those surrounding Pittsburg. But there is no anonymity in these smaller…
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