Thousands more people are now traveling to Kansas for abortions, research finds

In the first half of 2023, nearly two-thirds of people getting abortions in Kansas traveled from out-of-state, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute.
WICHITA, Kansas — Eighty-one out of every 100 patients who go to the Trust Women clinic for an abortion have crossed state lines to get there. An average of 54 are from Texas, 21 are from Oklahoma and six are from another state that doesn’t border Kansas, clinic officials say.

“Our clinic receives an average of 3,000 to 4,000 phone calls a day,” said Zachary Gingrich-Gaylord, the Wichita clinic’s communications director. “We have capacity for around 40 to 50 appointments per clinic day.”

The estimates reinforce new research that shows the extent to which Kansas continues to be a significant abortion access point for people living in states with abortion bans.

In the first half of 2023, 65% of abortion patients in Kansas traveled here from outside the state — the second-highest percentage of any state in the country, according to the analysis from the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. Researchers estimated that 3,700 more people traveled to Kansas for an abortion over the first six months of 2023 compared with a similar period in 2020.