Wyoming will become the second state in America without a Planned Parenthood this summer.
The AP reports the Planned Parenthood facility in Casper, Wyoming plans to close on July 21 due to financial reasons. The facility did not perform abortions but did refer for them. It is the only Planned Parenthood in the state.
In total, the abortion chain’s Rocky Mountain affiliate is closing five facilities in addition to the one in Wyoming, according to the Casper Star Tribune. The affiliate also covers Colorado, New Mexico and parts of Nevada. The report did not indicate which other facilities are closing.
“We looked at what services we provided,” Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains official Adrienne Mansanares said. “We also looked at the financial health of the health center.”
Mansanares said the decision did not relate to the U.S. Congressional efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
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The Casper facility opened in 1975 and saw about 500 patients per year, according to the report. In July, Wyoming will join North Dakota as the only two states without a Planned Parenthood, according to the AP.
Here’s more from the local news:
Spokeswoman Whitney Phillips said patients would be referred to three local providers: Cedars Health, Community Health Center of Central Wyoming and Casper-Natrona County Health department. All three take walk-ins and appointments and accept Medicaid, she said.
The fact that Casper had other places for women to receive comprehensive reproductive health care was a factor in the decision to close the Planned Parenthood clinic here, Mansanares said.
The Casper location does not provide abortions. It offers services including birth control, testing for pregnancy and other various diseases and abortion referrals.
These reasons contradict what national Planned Parenthood leaders have been saying to defend the millions in taxpayer dollars they receive each year.
They claim if Planned Parenthood is defunded, women will lose access to health care. They also claim that community health centers, which outnumber Planned Parenthoods by more than 20 to one and would receive the funding that Planned Parenthood currently gets, will not be able to handle all their patients.
But Planned Parenthood has been closing facilities across the U.S. and referring their patients to these community health centers itself – and the abortion chain has not even lost its taxpayer funding yet.
In March, the same thing happened in Pennsylvania when Planned Parenthood announced plans to close two facilities there. The local Planned Parenthood officials said the closures were not related to the Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. They also said patients would be referred to a new community health clinic in the area that accepts Medicaid and offers all the same services as Planned Parenthood except abortions.
The closings of these rural, non-abortion clinics are interesting given that Planned Parenthood has repeatedly claimed it needs taxpayer funding to help patients in rural, under-served communities.
American Life League reports Planned Parenthood closed 27 facilities in 2016, and its total number of facilities are down by one third. This is despite receiving strong support during President Barack Obama’s administration, including nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding annually.
Planned Parenthood also is performing fewer non-abortion services, according to its annual reports from the past several years. From 2010 to 2014, Planned Parenthood reports showed dramatic decreases in the actual health services it provides, including breast cancer screenings, pap tests and STD tests and treatments.
Its abortion numbers, however, have remained fairly steady in the past few years (its 2016 report is not out yet), despite so many of its facilities closing. This and other factors indicate the abortion chain is concentrating more on its money-making abortion business than ever before.
