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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. It's been three weeks now since the Supreme Court held that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion, overruling both Roe verses Wade and Planned Parenthood versus Casey. Here are some of the most recent headlines. One we talked about but it's still shocking and having ripple effects. The case of the 10-year-old child seeking an abortion outside of her home state of Ohio, after she was raped, has shocked the nation. The child traveled to Indiana, where she had learned she had just passed the six-week mark of her pregnancy.

Now the Indiana Attorney General, Todd Rokita, is threatening criminal charges against the doctor who performed the abortion according to Politico. Meanwhile, Indiana's GOP dominated legislature is preparing to enact some ban of its own like Ohio's in a special summer session, according to Yahoo News. Meanwhile, some good news for abortion rights for now from West Virginia, of all places. On Monday, a judge in that state blocked a law dating back to the 1800s which would make performing or obtaining an abortion a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The state's Republican Attorney General, Patrick Morrissey, lamented the judge's order and said his office will appeal to the state Supreme Court that according to The Guardian, and that 1800s law kicks in because Roe verses Wade was reversed. While it may appear that battles like those are happening in conservative led states only, New York as a safe harbor for those seeking abortions is gearing up for an issue of its own. We mentioned it with Dr. Voss and briefly, it's an influx of out-of-state residents seeking abortions that they can't get at home.

In addition to bills passed by the New York State Legislature last month, on Thursday, New York City Council approved additional measures for abortion access, including requiring city run clinics to stock medications that can end the pregnancy. Joining me now to discuss how abortion providers are bracing for and beginning to deal with the post Roe reality in New York is Dr. Gillian Dean, Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood of Greater New York. Dr. Dean, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Dr. Gillian Dean: Thank you, Brian. Thank you for having me on.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll open up the phones right away to abortion providers, that's first priority on the phones right now, abortion providers, anyone involved in any level, as providers, how have you been impacted in these last three weeks, if at all, in our area by people traveling to New York or New Jersey to get abortions around here? How are you responding to the latest headlines across the country? Help us report what you're seeing on the ground, help us report the story of New York and New Jersey as safe harbors. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

If anyone out there recently got abortion services in our area and you want to share your experience, anything happened to and with you that seems to reflect the demand from out of state 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Any trouble getting an appointment because there isn't as much capacity per patient as there was anything you want to report, help us report this story, 212-433-9692. Dr. Dean, as I mentioned at the top, it's been three weeks since the Supreme Court ruled, can you talk about some of the impact that that has already had on Planned Parenthood of Greater New York? What are you seeing, who that's new are you helping?

Dr. Gillian Dean: Sure. Well, I will tell you that this wrongful decision, this disgraceful decision has provoked a healthcare crisis in just three short weeks. This is not theoretical. We are seeing this every day in our health centers because we are seeing patients from outside of New York State, Ohio, Georgia, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona, Louisiana, just to name a few. These patients are traumatized by the experience not only of having to overcome some very serious hurdles to obtain abortion care, which is necessary health care, essential health care. They are also traumatized by the fear that somebody in their home communities, in their home states, could find out that they have obtained health care, abortion care, or someone that they love could be held criminally liable for assisting them and getting this care.

The stress, the trauma, I cannot downplay it. We have patients who their blood pressure is shooting through the roof, they are tearful, stressed, anxious, it's alarming. I'll give you an example of a patient who came to us recently. This is somebody who is from Oklahoma. She's a student in Louisiana, she found out she was pregnant, actually, right before the Supreme Court's decision. Oklahoma was poised to ban abortion in that state, all abortion. She found that she was pregnant and it was just right before the Oklahoma decision. She tried to get an appointment in her home state of Oklahoma and was unable to get an appointment.

As a student, she was on a budget and it took her months, three months to be exact, to raise the money to be able to get to a state where she could get the necessary health care that she needed. She started her journey at 10 weeks, she came to us at 22 weeks pregnant, when the procedure is longer, carries more risk. Fortunately, we were able to take care of her and provide her with a safe, legal abortion because abortion is legal in New York. Just the stress that she and others are experiencing is just unbelievable, and yet these are the lucky ones.

Brian Lehrer: You raise an aspect of the risk from the new laws around the country that hasn't gotten much publicity yet. It's not only can you get access to abortion at all, it's if the process of getting to another state takes so long, 12 weeks, and the story that you just told, then it's going to be a higher risk procedure and so that's another side effect of these laws in the other states. How in your experience are folks getting here? What states are they mostly coming from so far?

Dr. Gillian Dean: I have a list, actually, of all the states that we've been seeing folks from and this may not be exhaustive. We have seen folks from Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah. I think that there are others on that list. They are coming by car, some are flying. As I said, these are the lucky ones, because we know that it's costly to fly, it's costly to fill your car up with gas and make the trip and to take the time off from work and to find childcare.

Even though it's such a traumatic experience for these folks, they are the lucky ones because we know that there are many more folks who were not able to leave their home state to obtain abortion services and were forced to carry pregnancies that were against their will, pregnancies that might have endangered their health, or put their families into financial hardship.

Most people who get abortions are either parents or planning to be parents someday and so much of the decision-making about abortion is based on the family that people have or planned to have an economic decision-making. We know that these bans are disproportionately affecting patients who are low income, who are Black Latinx, indigenous, LGBTQ, folks who have historically faced discrimination in health care, and had more challenge accessing health care. This ban is going to disproportionately impact those people and rural folks as well.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your stories. As I said before, if you're a provider, what are you seeing, in terms of demand from people from out-of-state individual stories? Obviously, you're not going to name the patient's name but something like Dr. Dean from Planned Parenthood of Greater New York was just describing about that one woman who came to New York for abortion services and how long that took.

Who has a story to humanize the data that we're starting to hear, or just a question for Dr. Gillian Dean, Chief Medical Officer of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet your question @BrianLehrer and we'll take some calls in just a minute. I want to get through a few more questions for you first, Dr. Dean.

Dr. Gillian Dean: Sure.

Brian Lehrer: I read that in response to the Supreme Court decision, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York increased abortion appointment availability by 20%. Confirm that and are you seeing 20% increase in demand already?

Dr. Gillian Dean: What we did was an across-the-board increase of 20% for our medication and surgical or procedural abortion services. That was both to meet the demand that we knew was going to be coming from other states and also to be better at meeting the demand from New Yorkers to decrease our wait times and to better serve the patients of New York and beyond.

The actual steps that we took to make this happen, it was a multi-pronged approach. Some of it was simply just opening up more appointments, making more panels dedicated to abortion care while still maintaining our other sexual reproductive health services which we can talk about someday. Some of it was employing evidence-based strategies to make the visit more efficient. For example, there's good data that medication abortion can safely be confirmed that it worked, that that procedure was complete.

It can be confirmed with a home pregnancy test instead of requiring the patient to return for an ultrasound or blood draw. By allowing patients to use a home pregnancy test to confirm that the abortion was complete, we save our ultrasound for a new patient coming in to seek services. It was strategic decisions like that to employ evidence, to make our visit more streamlined, more patient-centered, and more efficient so that we can serve more patients. We're also working really hard to hire staff. I know you know that there is a employment crisis in the healthcare industry. Folks are burned out from the pandemic and we have seen departures from the field and particularly in a critical group, nurses. We are doubling down on our efforts to hire nurses who are so important to abortion care.

Brian Lehrer: Is demand outstripping supply at the moment? Is it harder for a New Yorker, let's say, to get an appointment with Planned Parenthood, either for abortion services or for other sexual and reproductive health services that you offer as you mentioned than it was three weeks ago?

Dr. Gillian Dean: No, by expanding our offerings, by bringing in additional staff, opening up more appointments, and creating these strategies to streamline the visit, we have been able actually to decrease wait times which is so critically important because accessing abortion is time sensitive. As we talked about earlier, the earlier you can obtain an abortion, generally the safer the procedure is going to be. What we have done is we have reduced our wait times and we have not seen the influx of patients from outside of New York impact New Yorker's ability to get this essential service.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you about the implications of the case that I mentioned at the top, and that we've talked about previously on the show of the 10-year-old child from Ohio obtaining an abortion out of state in Indiana, in that case, which has been so shocking to people. I think part of the reaction that people have to that is, wow, that's really extreme that Ohio law would block an abortion even in the case of rape of a 10-year-old, but that's what the law does do in Ohio.

I think a light that might be worth shining as a result of awareness from that case is that minors, including relatively young children, by minors, I don't mean necessarily 16-year-old and 17-year-olds, but much younger than that, do get impregnated and services need to be provided to them too. Sexual assault, rape, is disproportionately the case for them than for people of other ages. Can you talk about that?

Dr. Gillian Dean: Sure. First of all, I want to acknowledge to name what you refer to. We were talking about the case of a young child who was raped. I just want to make sure that listeners are aware in case this is queuing or triggering in any way to call that out before we dive into this because it is very disturbing, but at the same time unfortunately it is all too common. I have seen patients like this.

This is why I was surprised by the uproar people attacking the integrity of the doctor who I actually know through professional circles to have quite a lot of professional integrity. Attacking her integrity and saying that she was not a trustworthy source of this information. I found that shocking. I, unfortunately, did not find it surprising that there was a 10-year-old who had been raped and impregnated because I have cared for those patients myself in my own practice.

Brian Lehrer: According to the recent article on Politico that I mentioned, the Indiana attorney general is threatening criminal charges against the Indiana doctor who performed the abortion on the 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio. For people who may skeptically say, "Oh, this wasn't a rape, this is fake." That's what the attorney general of Ohio originally said that this was a hoax, but then he had to eat his words because they found the person who did it and they charged him.

On Thursday, the attorney general of Indiana asked their Republican Governor, Eric Holcomb, to release records from the Indiana department of health to determine whether the doctor had filed the legally required reports within the three-day window of performing the abortion. The doctor is also now threatening the attorney general with a defamation suit. To your knowledge, are abortion providers in New York State facing any of these kinds of issues of harassment?

Dr. Gillian Dean: Well, I can say that as abortion providers, we have always faced harassment before this Supreme Court's decision. Dating back to when I was in medical school in Boston, that was the first time I received harassing material. I know as an abortion provider in New York, and I know this to be true of my colleagues in New York State, we, many of us, are on anti's websites. I'm standing in a health center in Manhattan right now listening to people screaming on the street at our staff, at our patients.

We have always been the subject of harassment even in an abortion-friendly supportive state like New York. However, what you just mentioned, the attack by government officials, by elected representatives, et cetera, that, fortunately, we are spared. I haven't heard of anything like that happening in New York State. In fact, quite the opposite. The legislature in New York just passed a set of laws protecting abortion providers and not just the doctors who do abortions, but the nurses, the front desk staff, all of us who are involved in this care. Protecting us from being extradited or facing criminal charges from other states when we care for patients from those states who were unable to obtain the care that they needed in their home state. I feel very grateful to live and practice in a place like New York.

Brian Lehrer: Bailey in Williamsburg, you're on WNYC with the Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, Dr. Gillian Dean. Hello, Bailey.

Bailey: Hi, how's it going?

Dr. Gillian Dean: Hi.

Bailey: I had a quick question around the legality side of things and the criminality side. Especially when you think of whether it's of this poor girl that's 10 years old getting raped, or anyone really at the end of the day from a medical perspective, it's the man who is actually causing the woman to be pregnant. As an anti-abortion, I'm pro-abortion 100%, but I wonder about fixing the issue, addressing the men because even when you think about the people who are passing lots of this legislation, and in general, in that state, why would it be the doctor's fault or the woman's fault and not the actual person that has the ability to impregnate? What is their responsibility in the criminality of it all?

Brian Lehrer: Bailey, thank you. Dr. Dean.

Dr. Gillian Dean: Oh, yes. Thank you. I can tell you that the patients who are seeking care are often afraid for their loved ones, including their male partners, who, because these folks are helping them obtain abortion, could face criminal charges in their home state. To mention Oklahoma again, before we lost the constitutional protections of Roe, Oklahoma as I was saying earlier banned abortion in that state.

The day afterwards a woman from Oklahoma flew out to New York to obtain a very early abortion. She was lucky to get in, she had the resources and she had the support of her male partner who would've been the person not her, he would've been the person under Oklahoma law at that time who would've been at risk for criminal charges for assisting her in obtaining an abortion. He was the only person she had told, no one else in her circle knew, her gynecologist didn't know and she did not plan on telling anyone else because she feared for his safety.

Brian Lehrer: Well, nor do I hear coming from these restrictive states the fervor among the politicians for making sure that the men who impregnate the women provide child support if they're not married and/or otherwise doing it anyway. They're really all psyched up to charge women and charge doctors but not about the men to care for these babies who are going to be forced to be born.

Dr. Gillian Dean: Very true.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FMHD and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Susex, WNJY 89.3 Netcon, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. A few minutes left with Dr. Gillian Dean, the Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood of Greater New York as we talk about the beginning of the post Roe era and the beginning of the influx of people from out of state to the greater New York area, certainly includes New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, of people seeking abortions here in these safe harbor states when they can't get them at home.

Here's a question on Twitter from a listener it says, "How available is birth control? It's so hypocritical," writes the listener, "that these people who want to deny people abortions also are not interested in providing safe, free, and readily available birth control or prenatal or childcare for those who do carry to term." There's really two categories in there birth control and prenatal care guarantees, do you see threats to birth control or even preexisting restrictions and various barriers to access that inform the current situation?

Dr. Gillian Dean: If you had asked me five years ago if I thought we were going to lose Roe I would've said that's impossible and so, do I think that the right to contraception is also potentially on the chopping block? I'm no longer going to say oh, that can't happen because it already did happen to something that we thought was a fundamental right and that a generation of women, couple of generations, have come of age expecting to be able to obtain this healthcare.

On top of that, we know that there are large places in the US, many of them in the states that have just outlawed banned abortion. It is hard to obtain the full spectrum of contraceptive options because healthcare is expensive because there is no public assistance to cover certain methods, certain approaches to contraception because people do not have access to the contraceptive care. We already know that there are contraceptive deserts throughout the US and they tend to correspond with what are now places that have gone dark in terms of their providing abortion.

We also fear that some providers are not going to feel comfortable providing methods of contraception that have been attacked by anti-abortion forces like intrauterine devices or contraceptives that are highly effective, have changed people's lives, but have been the source of attack from anti's.

Brian Lehrer: We're just about out of time how can people help people who don't work for Planned Parenthood or aren't medical providers if they want to help people obtain access to abortion services in New York State from out of state in this new environment?

Dr. Gillian Dean: Sure, there are several different ways to help. First of all, if you or someone you know is pregnant and wants to seek abortion services know that abortion is legal in New York and contact your local Planned Parenthood health center or another provider in your area. Take care of yourselves. We have to take care of ourselves for the battle ahead this is a marathon and not a sprint. Other things that folks can do is to support healthcare providers but go beyond that to support other organizations that help people obtain safe, legal abortion.

We're not doing this alone it takes a village so there are abortion funds that can be supported both here in New York and in states where folks have lost access. There are organizations like Haven which provide housing to people traveling from out of state seeking abortion. If you are able you can volunteer with an organization like Haven to provide housing to somebody traveling from out of state.

You can contact your local Planned Parenthood or other provider to see whether they need clinic escorts. We could use them right now with this woman who is creating quite a ruckus on the corner in NoHo. Another thing that you can do is to vote, to stay politically involved, and make sure that your representatives reflect your views.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Gillian Dean, MD, Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Gillian Dean: Thank you.

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