Abortion ‘travel agent’ helps women come to Kansas and beyond to get the procedure

The woman in rural Oklahoma was seeking an abortion.

But last month, the state enacted a ban that effectively ended the procedure there.

The closest clinic with an opening was the Planned Parenthood in Overland Park — nearly a 10-hour round-trip drive. Money and time were an issue.

So last week, Angela Huntington made it happen for her.

As an abortion patient navigator, she arranged for the woman to fly in a small, private plane to and from her procedure, at no cost.

Huntington, who works in Columbia, Missouri, is one of six such navigators for Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which serves Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. They work with hundreds of patients every month to ensure anyone can access the procedure, even if they can’t afford it and even if they live in states that ban it.

“I feel like a travel agent,” Huntington said. “You’re working on Greyhound buses and hotels, and you’re calling the patient navigator in whatever state you’re referring them to, to make sure that they can help cover the cost of the procedure.”

For the Oklahoma woman, Huntington connected her with the Midwest Access Coalition in Illinois, which, among other things, helps women travel to get legal abortions. That group, in turn, brought in a new organization, Elevated Access, whose volunteer pilots “have their own planes (and) will actually fly to a little regional airport in the middle of nowhere, pick up a patient and take them to their appointment,” Huntington said.

The Oklahoma woman’s June 9 flight was the organization’s first official mission.

“The client drove 10 minutes from their house to the airport, flew for an hour and a half to their appointment, and then flew an hour and a half back home,” the Elevated Access executive director said. His name is Mike, and he doesn’t reveal his full name due to safety concerns. “It would probably have been a two-day trip if they had to drive it.”

Huntington started at Planned Parenthood in 2018 as the manager of its Columbia Health Center, which no longer provides abortions. In September, she joined the newly formed patient navigator program.

It started in response to the Texas law banning abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected, Huntington said. “We have always assisted patients financially, … but we haven’t ever had an organized department that was specifically patient navigation.”

In the past three months, the group has assisted over 1,200 patients with procedure and travel costs.

In Missouri, only one clinic provides abortions — Planned Parenthood in St. Louis. Kansas has four locations — two in Overland Park and two in Wichita.

But that could soon change, as Missouri is poised to enact a “trigger law” banning most abortions if Roe v. Wade is struck down. Kansas residents will vote in August on a constitutional amendment that could pave the way for the state Legislature to do the same.

Still, Huntington feels they will still “be able to connect patients to wherever they need to get care.”

“We’ve been living in this post-Roe era in our affiliate for a very long time,” she said. “It’s going to be more difficult, it’s going to be sad, it’s going to be horrible, but we’re ready for it.”

Changing state laws

In Kansas, the right to have an abortion is protected under the state constitution. That may change, however.

On Aug. 2, Kansans will vote on a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the state’s protection of abortion rights.

“That’s very problematic, and the reason is because people in the state Legislature of Kansas have already shown their hand about what they’re going to do when and if they win,” said Dr. Iman Alsaden, medical director of Planned Parenthood Great Plains.

Those in favor of the amendment, who call it Value Them Both, worry that Kansas may become a Midwest abortion destination.

“The Value Them Both Amendment simply ensures that there can be at least some limits on the abortion industry and that you are not forced to subsidize the industry with your tax dollars,” their website says. “We do not want Kansas to become like New York or Colorado.”

If passed, the amendment opens the door for state lawmakers to enact bans or stricter limits on abortions, mirroring neighboring states.

“Even if abortion becomes illegal in Kansas, we will continue to help get patients to where they need to go, obviously, within the confines of the law,” Alsaden said. “But, it would be devastating to the people that are relying on us from Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas and Missouri.”

In Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson signed the “trigger law” in 2019. If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade (the landmark ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide), the state’s ban would take effect upon approval from the state’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, or Parson, or the legislature.

Schmitt has shared his willingness to do so following the leaked U.S. Supreme Court ruling to overturn the case.

The court’s ruling is expected to come later this month or early in July.

Oklahoma passed what is now the nation’s strictest abortion regulation, banning the procedure except in cases where a pregnant woman’s life is in danger or rape or incest has been reported to law enforcement, and is the cause of the pregnancy.

The Texas Heartbeat Act, passed in 2021, banned the procedure following the detection of fetal cardiac activity, usually around six weeks.

The only nearby states where abortion doesn’t seem to be on the line are Colorado and Illinois.

Taking action

Planned Parenthood navigators across the country work with one another to coordinate access for patients, and they plan to continue doing so even if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

“We will refer anywhere and everywhere,” Huntington said. “If it’s an independent clinic that has nothing to do with Planned Parenthood, and they have better availability than the Planned Parenthood down the road in Colorado, we’re going to refer them to the independent clinic.”

The process can include covering the cost of travel and even the procedure itself, Huntington said.

The procedure can cost up too $750, according to the Planned Parenthood website. The organization has both internal and external funding sources, such as the Kansas Abortion Fund and the Missouri Abortion Fund to help patients.

Patients must go through a screening process to evaluate what kind of financial assistance they qualify for.

“If they qualify for everything, great — we’re able to adjust the cost of that appointment down to whatever they can pay,” Huntington said. “Then if they need (a) hotel, if they need a flight, if they need gas cards, from there, we screen them to find out what their needs are.”

“We will be able to connect patients to wherever they need to get care,” she said.

In Overland Park, the Planned Parenthood parking lot has had Texas license plates in it for quite some time, Alsaden said.

“Even before (the Texas law) we received people from states that were not in our affiliate at our Oklahoma and Kansas and Arkansas health centers,” Alsaden said. “I think that, of course, there’s these extremes of people driving 12 hours in the middle of the night to get an abortion. … But, there’s also people that just live here and need abortions too.”

Getting to the Overland Park location can have barriers, even for those in the area, Alsaden said.

“Overland Park is pretty hard to access if you don’t have a car, and the public transportation in Kansas City is not the best,” she said.

There is also a consent form that must be signed 24 hours before the procedure, per Kansas regulation.

“Oftentimes, people come and their consent is (filled out) wrong — we’ve had people come from Texas and their consent is wrong, we’ve had people come from Kansas City, Kansas, and their consent is wrong,” Alsaden said.

In such cases, patients would have to reschedule their appointment. But the Planned Parenthood navigation team can usually make arrangements for an extended stay that may be needed, Huntington said.

“Once they get into our clinic, we do an ultrasound and then there’s another consent form that they have to sign with the doctor, that’s called the 30 minute consent form,” Alsaden said. “There’s all kinds of internal hurdles once they get to the abortion clinic.”

Then there are the external barriers.

“There’s a lot of issues of like, ‘oh, I don’t want anyone to take me to clinic because abortion has so much shame and stigma associated with it’,” Alsaden said. “There’s just all these little things that people don’t know the answer to and have to go through to get to us, even locally.”

For more information on the Planned Parenthood Great Plains abortion resources, visit plannedparenthood.org or call 800-230-7526 (PLAN).