CHOICE/LESS, Episode 6 – Kelsey: Who can we talk to?

South Dakota has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. It’s not an easy place to provide or access abortion care. The Sioux Falls Planned Parenthood is the only abortion clinic in the state, and they don’t even have a full-time provider. Instead, doctors come in from out of state on the days the clinic offers abortions.

The state requires patients seeking abortions to wait 72 hours between an in-clinic counseling session and the procedure. Monday is the counseling day, and Thursday is the procedure day. Patients must do both appointments in the same week, so if someone came in on a Monday but needed to reschedule Thursday’s procedure, she would need to start the entire process again the next Monday.

In this episode of CHOICE/LESS, we hear from Kelsey, who asked that we don’t share her last name. As a former Planned Parenthood employee, she was already familiar with the state’s restrictive abortion laws when she found out she was pregnant. It was a pregnancy she did not want to continue, but she also knew she couldn’t take the time off work to get an abortion in her own state.

Listen to Kelsey’s story here.

Kelsey Transcript (PDF)

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