About a mile from the Chicago arena where politicians gave primetime speeches at the glitzy Democratic National Convention, about two dozen people got free vasectomies and medication abortions in a parking lot.
Planned Parenthood Great Rivers—the affiliate for the St. Louis region and Missouri Ozarks, where abortion is banned—brought its mobile clinic to the state to, yes, provide free care to Illinois residents on Monday and Tuesday. But the organization also wanted to show people that, even in a state where abortion is protected, there is still "tremendous need," Dr. Colleen McNicholas, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, told Jezebel.
There were 10 vasectomy slots available for Monday, and McNicholas said they filled up in about 24 hours and generated a waitlist. The men who came to the clinic and saw her colleague Dr. Margaret Baum were very grateful, she said. "Almost every single one of them shared a story about how they had been wanting this for so long, but they're either uninsured or their insurance doesn't cover it, and so they didn't have access to it," McNicholas said. (Insurance is required to cover birth control methods for women, not for men.) "Oftentimes there is financial support for folks who need abortion. Those same resources don't exist for folks who are getting a vasectomy."
The resources McNicholas is referring to are abortion funds, and the Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF) was on site to provide free emergency contraception pills. Every patient also got a coupon for a free hot dog from The Weiners Circle, which went viral this week for its Trump footlong that is, in fact, 3 inches. Both the clinic and CAF information table were outside INTO ACT!ON 2024, a non-partisan art and culture event to encourage voting. There was also an inflatable, 20-foot IUD outside from the group Americans for Contraception.
The typical cost of a medication abortion is about $500, McNicholas said, and the 12 appointments for free abortions on Tuesday filled up within three days. McNicholas dispensed the medications mifepristone and misoprostol and CAF had after-care kits available that were stocked with pads, heat packs, tea, pain relievers, and treats like a face mask.
McNicholas gave a little video tour of the mobile clinic, which she said PPGR bought and renovated around the time of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
https://twitter.com/ppgreatrivers/status/1825976554314211767
The affiliate thought it would send the clinic just across the border to Illinois to help Missourians access abortion, but it turned out that multiple new brick-and-mortar providers opened in Southern Illinois so the need wasn't really there. "Instead, we really pivoted to using it at sort of crisis points," McNicholas said. In 2023, Missouri moved to ban gender-affirming care for people not already receiving it.
"When we heard about that, we brought the mobile unit and we said, 'If you want to start your gender-affirming care, make an appointment.' We saw so many people who got in under the wire to establish care," she said. (A ban for adults was blocked, but care is restricted for minors.) And PPGR will continue to use it for vasectomies and abortions—the affiliate will also offer free vasectomies in Missouri for World Vasectomy Day in October.
And as politicians and voters alike discuss the prospect of restoring abortion rights nationwide, McNicholas wants people to really absorb how the Roe framework left so many people unprotected and facing severe restrictions. After all, Missouri had just one abortion clinic left during Roe's final years—the clinic where she worked.
"As we're thinking about the solutions, what I want people to do is think about the t-shirts and the slogans and the signs that they hold up all the time and to actually put those into action," she said. "When we talk about centering Black patients, when we talk about no bans on any bodies, when we talk about making it accessible and affordable, if we center those people and we fix it for the people who are historically left behind—people who need abortions later in pregnancy—if we put them first, we fix it for everybody. And we have an opportunity to do that now."
McNicholas said policymakers have a duty to use the current anger to achieve true abortion access. "The public has never been so engaged and has never been so outraged at government interference in pregnancy than they are in this moment," she said. "It would really be irresponsible of us to not take that opportunity to actually fix the system."
Subscribe to Jezebel and follow us on Instagram and Twitter for continued coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
