Though it’s a rough time for reproductive health, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast is asserting its continued presence in New Orleans with a new exhibit looking back at its 40-year history in Louisiana.
“We’re still here, holding strong to a vision of reproductive freedom and a future where everyone can control their own bodies and lives,” said Melaney Linton, CEO and President of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast. “That’s never changed, and it never will.”
The agency’s exhibit, “Forty Years: Moving Forward,” opens at the Ten Nineteen gallery at 1019 Erato St. later today, two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned and two days after the re-election of former President Donald Trump — whose U.S. Supreme Court appointees overturned Roe v. Wade, the court’s landmark decision. Roe v. Wade had been the law of the land since 1973, when justices ruled that the decision to end a pregnancy belonged to the individual, not the government.
Gallery owner Elizabeth Monaghan, who previously served for two years on the local Planned Parenthood board, sees the exhibit as perfectly timed. “It’s meaningful for people to gather right now and reassure people that we’re here and the work continues,” she said. For the occasion, the gallery also is displaying pins designed by Thomas Mann that are intricate brass replicas of uteri and other designs.
A national group, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, opened in 1916. The New Orleans affiliate was founded in 1984 and opened its first clinic in a modest shotgun on Magazine Street, as pictured at the beginning of the exhibit.
From that shotgun house, Planned Parenthood established a presence that has spanned 40 years in Louisiana — within a timeline of increasingly restrictive laws targeting women’s health and reproductive freedom, including access to abortion.
The exhibit aims to foster community in a time of uncertainty, said Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast spokesperson Kendra Smith-Parks. In some ways, that time of uncertainty has stretched back a few decades in Louisiana, as legislators consistently passed some of the nation’s most drastic abortion restrictions. Many of them were overturned by courts after Planned Parenthood and other abortion-rights advocates filed suit.
In 2006 the state passed a “trigger ban” law that outlawed abortion immediately in Louisiana if Roe V. Wade was overturned. At the time, the Supreme Court was still affirming that the Constitution protected abortion as an essential liberty. But in 2022, that shifted. Roe was overturned and abortion clinics were shuttered in the state, though at first there was some back and forth, when abortion providers sued the state and Orleans Parish District Judge Robin Giarusso blocked the enforcement of the trigger ban.
In 2013, when Planned Parenthood outgrew its Magazine Street shotgun and made plans to open their current, 7,000-square-foot Claiborne Avenue facility, they faced a litany of challenges causing delays.
The struggle to open the clinic is emblematic of the battles they faced in Louisiana from state officials, who were determined to ban abortion entirely.
In 2015, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s attempted to defund the clinic by canceling its Medicaid contracts, a move opposed by the U.S. Department of Justice. The clinic also had to go through a lengthy Facility Need Review, ostensibly to confirm that the additional care was needed by the nearby community, though the state banned outpatient abortion that same year.
Though the organization was able to eventually break ground and construct the facility, its doctors were able to provide only women’s reproductive-health services — no abortions. The state Department of Health refused to approve the licenses the clinic needed to do so.
Watching the delayed construction of the new clinic led Monaghan to call Planned Parenthood, asking to serve on the board. “It was the right thing to do,” she said. “I was driving past the Claiborne construction site every day and watching that stall out.”
Blocked from providing on-site abortions, Planned Parenthood shifted its resources elsewhere. They help women find the reproductive care they need out of state. So far, in 2024, the organization has given $162,000 to support 376 people traveling for reproductive care.
The trips were not all for abortions. “They’re afraid to go to their doctor with pregnancy complications, miscarriage management,” Smith-Parks said. “So we expanded our pregnancy-related services.”
Further restricting care
The exhibit, created in partnership with Newcomb Archives and the Vorhoff Collection at Tulane University, traces Louisiana’s ever-restrictive laws.
On the gallery’s white walls, visitors can track Planned Parenthood reactions – highlighted in bright pink – against a backdrop of black-and-white bureaucratic hurdles.
In 2007, the state mandated women receive an ultrasound, visible and audible to them, before being allowed to receive an abortion. State law required the heart beat be audible — unless a woman initialed an opt-out form.
In 2016, Louisiana tripled a one-day waiting period to 72-hours, meaning women must return to the clinic a second day, taking more time off work, before they could have abortions.
In the summer of 2022, after the fall of Roe and amid a flurry of restraining orders, abortion providers were stopped and started several times in the state. Ultimately, the trigger law took effect and the clinics all stopped operating.
The restrictions, and competing interests have continued in recent years. In 2023, the state passed authorizing tax credits for a donation to crisis pregnancy centers – clinics or mobile vans run by anti-abortion advocates that look like health centers but do not provide full healthcare.
This spring, state legislators passed a law requiring the two drugs used to perform medication abortions be labeled dangerous substances. As a result, starting Oct. 1, Louisiana hospitals are required to lock up misoprostol — the medication used to stop postpartum hemorrhage.
Louisiana is the first state in the nation to restrict the two medications in that way.
Doctors who opposed the re-labeling testified that the extra minutes it takes to retrieve the medication from locked storage will likely cost some women their lives.
Though the current political climate may seem hostile to women’s health, women’s rights, even women themselves, Petrice Sams-Abiodun, the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, has a directive for visitors.
“As you explore this exhibit” she said, “look for hope instead of despair.”
Forty Years: Moving Forward
November 7 – 30, 2024
Thursdays – Saturdays, 12-5 p.m.
Opening Reception: Nov. 7, 6 – 8 p.m.
Ten Nineteen gallery
1019 Erato St, New Orleans, LA
Admission: Free and open to the public
For healthcare, visit ppgulfcoast.org or call 1-800-230-PLAN. Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s eight health centers across southeast Texas and Louisiana remain open to provide services, including birth control, STI testing and treatment, and cancer screenings.
