Washington State’s reproductive health care system has been struggling to accommodate surging demand from out-of-state patients in the two years following the United States Supreme Court’s horrific Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a new report from Senator Maria Cantwell (D‑WA) detailed on Monday.
The report paints a dire picture of access in neighboring Idaho, where restrictions have compelled doctors to recommend patients buy air ambulance insurance should they need to be flown to Washington to be treated in a life-threatening situation.
“In Idaho, we’ve been flying out about a patient per week to Utah or Oregon or Washington because the fetus is nonviable or the life of the mother is at risk,” Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative Co-Chair Dr. Edward McEachern said.
“And they’re not able to find someone to provide them care in Idaho. That helicopter ride can cost over seventy grand — that bankrupts families.”
Unsurprisingly, patients from states with restrictive abortion laws have accounted for much of the increase in Washington’s services. The report says that Washington has seen a 56% increase in patients from Idaho, where abortion is outlawed in almost all circumstances. Washington has also treated a growing quantity of patients from twenty other states, like Texas, which has sent three times as many patients as Idaho.
Despite post-Roe restrictions on abortion in as many as twenty-two states, the number of abortions performed in the U.S. is at its highest in over a decade, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Much of the rise is due to increased usage of medication abortion like mifepristone. At the same time, the medical systems of states where reproductive care remains accessible have taken on the burden of treating many patients who otherwise would not be able to abort their pregnancies.
While Washington has continued to provide essential reproductive health care services to patients in need, Planned Parenthood — which provides abortion services — has reported longer waiting times, and Dr. Sarah Prager of the University of Washington Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology has said that they sometimes cannot perform scheduled procedures due to the influx in out-of-state patients. Oregon Health and Science University even reported a surge in patients from Washington.
Another Washington doctor quoted in the report said that the state had become a “safety net for medical care, but that we don’t substitute going to your doctor and getting regular screenings.”
Reproductive health care restrictions aren’t just taxing the health systems of pro-freedom states, however. Cantwell’s report notes that OB-GYNs are leaving Idaho and worsening medical professional shortages, while some medical school graduates are actively avoiding restrictive states for their residencies so they can learn the full suite of medical procedures necessary for their career.
Per Idaho Medical Association CEO Susie Keller: “every time there’s and adverse court decision, or a lack of action by the state legislature, we typically see a bump in the number of physicians that leave. We just concluded our Idaho legislative session at the beginning of April. And since then, we’ve documented five more doctors who are leaving.”
A U.S. Supreme Court decision released yesterday reinstated a pause on some of Idaho’s restrictions, meaning that patients can, for now, receive an abortion in the state if their health is at risk. Though the ruling will bring modest relief to patients and healthcare providers, Washington expects to continue to deal with elevated numbers of out-of-state patients requiring care moving forward.
