A couple weeks ago there was some surprising news out of New York. Planned Parenthood announced it would stop doing late-term abortions (those after 20 weeks) and also planned to close four clinics in the state. The problem in New York wasn't the legality of their business, it was the profitability. PP's president wrote in an opinion piece that because of inflation they were in trouble unless the state started directing more public money their way.
Today, the NY Times published a follow-up in the business section which makes the case that the business of abortion is not going well almost anywhere you look around the country. The story recounts the experience of a clinic in Washington DC which tried to expand in the Los Angeles area. It didn't go well.
The move to California was not an easy one. Dr. Reeves and Dr. Russo spent nearly a year scouring Los Angeles County for office space, only to have most landlords back out once they realized the clinic provided abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The doctors eventually found a spot in Beverly Hills, where the City Council had unanimously affirmed abortion’s legality shortly before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.But as the clinic filed the necessary paperwork to obtain an operating license and began extensive renovations, the problems began. An anti-abortion group, Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, started a series of protests: papering the building with fliers of aborted fetuses, projecting the words “murder mill” onto its facade and marching outside the seven-story building, which was home to dozens of other health care businesses.
Not surprisingly, their new landlord canceled their lease, arguing that their presence was making things difficult for other tenants. So after spending nearly $2 million prepping the new site (which suggests business has been good in Washington DC at some point), the clinic had nothing to show for it. They have sued the landlord but for the moment it appears they are not expanding to LA.
Even clinics that do open find that most of their clients can barely afford their services. That means the clinics can't raise prices in response to the inflation we've all experienced over the past 2 years.
Amy Hagstrom Miller, the C.E.O. of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates six clinics in four states as well as one virtual clinic, said only two of them were currently profitable. “Whenever I talk to people about my margins,” she said, “they’re like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”Procedure rates — which can run from $600 to many thousands for the rare abortions that take place late in a pregnancy — certainly haven’t kept pace with medical inflation, even though everything else about running a health care business, from insurance to equipment to payroll, has become more expensive.
There's some real irony here. Pro-life groups have spent decades campaigning against abortion and especially against late-term abortion. But it seems many clinics (like the ones in New York mentioned above) are now feeling pressure to stop performing these late abortions, not because of a change in the law but because of Bidenflation. I guess that's what they call a silver lining.
The final factor the article considers is that opposition to abortion has gone up, not down since the Dobbs decision. That's true even in very blue states.
Over the last two years, clinics trying to open in Fontana, Calif.; Lancaster, Pa.; and Danville, Ill. — all in states where abortion has been legal for 50 years — have faced fierce local resistance. In Pennsylvania, free-standing abortion clinics must sign a “transfer agreement,” a contract with a hospital within 30 minutes that can offer emergency care if needed. Last September, a county commissioner in Lancaster warned local hospitals against signing such an agreement with the new clinic...“The decision to overturn Roe has emboldened anti-abortion politicians in a way we hadn’t seen before, with more aggressive tactics, even in blue states like California,” Mr. Dunn said. “Those who oppose abortion rights are more dug in and more committed to stopping abortion providers in their areas.”
After 50 years of effort, the Supreme Court finally leveled the playing field. Not having to contend with a "constitutional right" which the court invented out of whole cloth in the 1970s, pro-life groups suddenly find themselves on the winning side. Meanwhile, having lost their unfair advantage, pro-abortion groups are just the PR arm of a struggling industry. It should come as no surprise, under the circumstances, that the pro-life groups are feeling more motivated and energized than they have in the past.
