Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona on Monday morning tweeted that Planned Parenthood will be offering abortion services in Tucson and is taking appointments.|| Twitter
By Stephanie Innes || Arizona Republic
Planned Parenthood Arizona has resumed abortion care, but only in Tucson for now.
The nonprofit organization, the largest abortion care provider in the state, has four clinics that until June 24 — the date of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to reverse Roe v. Wade — offered both surgical and medication abortions. Those clinics are in Flagstaff, Tempe, Glendale and Tucson.
“Our staff, everyone at Planned Parenthood Arizona, we are just so incredibly excited to be able to serve our community again in this way with essential abortion care,” Planned Parenthood Arizona’s president and CEO Brittany Fonteno told The Arizona Republic Monday.
“No matter what happens we’re going to continue fighting for our patients and their ability to access this health care.”
Fonteno said medication and surgical abortions resumed in Tucson on Monday and that in the coming weeks Planned Parenthood hopes to resume abortion care at its other three Arizona clinics.
A medication abortion, sometimes referred to as the abortion pill, is a two-drug combination for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy that accounts for more than half of abortions in the U.S.
“With the various shifts that have happened over the past couple of weeks, we’re really excited to be fulfilling our promise to resume abortion care.”
Brittany Fonteno
“As the state’s largest reproductive health care provider, resuming abortion services unfortunately isn’t as simple as turning on a light switch so we had a lot of work that had to be done on the back end to make sure that we were ready to go and start seeing patients again.”
Tucson was a starting point because it’s where Planned Parenthood was able to get providers who were comfortable in resuming care, she said.
