Packed in a modest-sized waiting room, supporters of Planned Parenthood echoed spoken word poet Wynter Storm to celebrate the grand opening of a bigger health center in Ogden.
“This body is mine,” the crowd chanted after Storm. “We have our rights.”
The old Ogden Planned Parenthood stood on Harrison Boulevard for roughly two decades. It was smaller but the health center served around 3,100 people a year. The new location in Washington Terrace across from the Ogden Regional Medical Center, is more than twice the size of its successor.
“With the expansion comes an opportunity to add clinician hours, more availability and to serve even more patients,” said Kathryn Boyd, the new CEO of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah. “I hope to double our availability and provide access to care six days a week in this location.”
During the new clinic’s commemoration, regional and local Planned Parenthood leaders dedicated the waiting room to Sarah McClellan – a long-time Ogden resident and champion of the organization. She remembers utilizing its services when she was a young adult in the 50s and so did her fellow community members.
Back then, she said, people didn’t have access to health care like they do today, so Planned Parenthood was a place they could visit for affordable care even before abortion was legalized.
“Their health care was Planned Parenthood,” McClellan said. “So I will always, as long as I have breath in my body, support Planned Parenthood.”
The Ogden clinic offers reproductive care, like birth control and vasectomies, family planning, counseling and sex education. While the Ogden Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer abortions, because it’s a bigger space Boyd said they plan on adding medication abortion care services in the future. She didn’t offer a timeline for when that would be available to Utahns.
“It's on my list. But adding to that is going to take a little bit of time,” Boyd said.
Aside from the logistical obstacles to expanding abortion care, like training clinical technicians, Boyd said the shaking landscape of abortion access in Utah “keeps her up at night.” Currently, abortions are legal in Utah up to 18 weeks of pregnancy thanks to legal action by Planned Parenthood and its partners.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade one year ago, Utah’s “trigger law” to effectively ban elective abortions was supposed to kick in. A Utah judge blocked the prohibition and the Utah Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in early August.
“I'm hopeful that the merits of this case will fall in our favor and that the Utah Supreme Court sees it that way,” she said. “However, we have to plan for every eventuality and try to think about everything that could happen.”
Only four facilities in Utah offer elective abortions. Three of them are located in Salt Lake County, two of which are operated by Planned Parenthood. The fourth facility, Logan Planned Parenthood, is currently closed. Boyd said it plans to reopen on July 27. Abortion care will resume that same day.
Annabel Sheinberg, vice president of external affairs for the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, added as some health care providers in the state move away from offering voluntary vasectomies and hysterectomies due to leadership changes, their facilities will be “a safe place” to receive those procedures. That alone, Sheinberg said, “probably will send more people here looking for those basic preventative care opportunities that are accessible, affordable and really just respect who they are.”
In the short term, while the fate of Utah’s abortion access lies in the hands of the courts, Boyd said the expansion of the Ogden clinic sends a strong signal.
“It signifies that you're not going to back us in a corner, that we're going to continue to grow and provide the necessary services throughout the communities in this state to make sure that people have access to the care that they want and they need, regardless of whether or not a piece of that care is an abortion care,” she said.
