Minnesota abortion providers prepare for influx of Iowans crossing the border for appointments

As a floating clinician for Planned Parenthood North Central States, it’s Shira Klane’s job to go wherever she’s needed.

This week, that meant two health centers in southern Minnesota, where patients from Iowa were already starting to show up in larger numbers in anticipation of imminent enforcement of their state’s new fetal heartbeat abortion ban.

“They feel crushed. It feels like such a heaviness that they are forced to carry,” said Klane, who was working Friday at the Planned Parenthood Mankato Health Center, an hour from the Iowa border. Earlier in the week, she saw four patients from Iowa in Planned Parenthood’s Rochester location who were “acutely aware” of the impending change.

Last month, the Iowa Supreme Court struck down a lower court injunction and allowed a law that bans abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy. Friday was the soonest the new Iowa law could kick in, dramatically limiting the time frame for abortions in the state, where they had been legal up to 20 weeks.

Abortion care providers in southern Minnesota are preparing for an influx of people crossing the state’s southern border.

“What we’re looking at is how we can help people from Iowa seek care that is essential. It is devastating that our patients have to cross state lines to receive essential care,” said Brooke Zahnle, who manages both the Rochester and Mankato health centers.

The Mankato Health Center moved in November to a brighter, more spacious location just a few blocks from Minnesota State University, Mankato. In January, they started offering medication abortion appointments on Wednesdays in addition to the existing family planning services.

Now, they’re planning to train employees so they can increase the number of medication abortion appointments to up to 22 per day in both the Mankato and Rochester locations.

The Iowa law, passed during a special session in July 2023, prohibits abortion after cardiac activity is detected, which is often before the pregnancy is known. It allows exceptions for rape or incest.

Data from the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for abortion access, shows nearly 4,200 clinician-provided abortions took place in Iowa in 2023, the first full year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

It also estimated 940 Iowans traveled to Minnesota for abortion procedures in 2023, but Minnesota providers expect that number to only go up.

Since Roe’s reversal two years ago, Planned Parenthood North Central States has seen a 10% increase in abortions in Minnesota, and the number of patients traveling from out of state has more than doubled. Abortion rights are protected in Minnesota under both a 1990s Minnesota Supreme Court ruling and a state law passed by the Democratic legislative majority in 2023.

Cathy Blaeser, co-executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion rights group, said its members are “encouraged to see Iowa’s increased protection for human beings in the womb” but they don’t want Minnesota to become a “haven for unlimited abortion.”

She also criticized DFL lawmakers for repealing the Positive Alternatives program, which funded so-called crisis pregnancy centers that encourage women to continue their pregnancies and provide resources to them. “These aren’t Minnesota values,” Blaeser said.

Minnesota has expanded abortion access since Roe’s demise at the same time bordering states have enacted laws that restrict it. Old laws still on the books banning abortion immediately took effect in South Dakota and Wisconsin after Roe was reversed, though a Wisconsin judge ruled in September that a pre-Civil War law didn’t apply to abortion care. North Dakota began enforcing a near-total ban earlier this year.

Zahnle was living in Wisconsin in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe. She remembered feeling “in absolute shock” at the time. Not long after, she moved to Minnesota and started working for Planned Parenthood.

“It’s really sad and it makes me angry,” she said. “It just makes me more determined to make sure there’s a safe haven in the Midwest that patients can go to access care.”