After closing for a year since December 2024, the Planned Parenthood in Santa Fe on St. Michaels Drive will open its doors once again on Monday, May 11.
Reproductive health is essential in every town, that is why during its closure, patients have had to seek women’s health care elsewhere in the state or via telehealth. This reopening will benefit the community.
Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains President and CEO Adrienne Mansanares couldn’t hide her joy over this momentous event.
“This is gonna be huge for the local Santa Fe community,” she said.
“In this moment, when we are seeing reproductive health care providers across the country forced to close their doors permanently because of federal attacks, there’s also a national provider shortage, and there’s rising costs associated with providing care,” she added.
The lack of staff of the center was the main driver of forcing it to close down. Before the closing, 200,000 patients visited the clinic, with then percent of those came from out of the state.
It is truly a great loss for most of the patient who only relies to this kind of services.
The Lack of Healthcare Access
The current abortion care bans and confusion about what kind of health care patients can access on their own push other patients to travel from out of state, particularly in Texas.
Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Mansanares says an increase in patients has come to Santa Fe from Texas and other states where reproductive health care is illegal.
“We were able to see them in our Las Cruces health center, in Albuquerque, up north in Farmington,” she said.
“But having Santa Fe in particular as one of those health centers that provides a web of Planned Parenthood presence across the state of New Mexico does help us offset some of the increased traveling patients,” she added
What Took Them Long to Reopen
The clinic took long to reopen because of hiring and trainign a new nurse practitioner took over a year. The new team now will consist of a nurse practitioner, support staffs, and a health center manager.
They are still finalizing the hiring of last few admin positions at the Santa Fe location, but that they have necessary staff to reopen.
Planned Parenthood says they’re planning to open a second location in Albuquerque before the end of the year.
Healthcare is a right of every individual, it should be accessible not taken away from them.