In the wake of a wave of abortion clinic closures across the country, an unlikely hero has emerged: urgent care clinics. In the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Marquette Medical Urgent Care has stepped up to fill the void left by the closure of Planned Parenthood, offering medication abortions to patients who now have nowhere else to turn. This development raises a deeper question: could urgent care clinics be the untapped solution to the growing crisis in abortion access?
Shawn Brown, a physician who describes herself as "individually pro-life," opened her urgent care clinic in Marquette with the intention of providing a range of services to the local community. However, she never anticipated the closure of the Planned Parenthood clinic in her area, which left roughly 1,100 patients without access to in-person abortion care. To address this gap, Brown added medication abortions to her clinic's services, providing a much-needed resource for patients in the region.
The idea that urgent cares could be an untapped solution to closures for abortion clinics across the country is really exciting, said Kimi Chernoby, the chief operating and legal officer at FemInEM, a national nonprofit that works to improve professional training and patient outcomes for women in emergency medicine. Urgent cares are designed to fill gaps in the system, ready to take walk-ins who aren't already patients, and they have the flexibility to adapt to changing needs and provide a range of services, including medication abortions.
One patient at the Marquette urgent care on a recent day was a woman who requested to be identified by her first initial, A, so she could talk candidly about a sensitive medical decision. She drove more than an hour on snowy backroads while her kids were in day care to get to her appointment, highlighting the challenges faced by patients in accessing abortion care in rural areas. The urgent care provided a safe and supportive environment for A to receive the medication abortion she needed, with a physician who was understanding and empathetic to her situation.
The Marquette clinic has already fielded questions from a large academic medical center that plans to start providing medication abortion at its own urgent cares later this year, indicating a growing interest in urgent care clinics as a solution to the abortion crisis. However, there are also potential pitfalls to this approach, such as state-specific laws and federal regulations that must be followed, and the need for health organizations to have a core mission that includes abortion access.
In the end, the story of Marquette Medical Urgent Care highlights the power of community and innovation in addressing a critical health care issue. By stepping up to fill a gap in the system, Brown and her team have provided a much-needed resource for patients in the Upper Peninsula, and their efforts may inspire others to follow suit in the face of the growing abortion crisis.
