(LifeSiteNews) — Planned Parenthood is looking to reassert its presence in Louisiana despite abortion being banned in the state with a new “telehealth” facility that will help facilitate abortion travel rather than personally aborting babies.
Louisiana bans abortion throughout pregnancy except when deemed “necessary” to prevent the death of the mother “due to a physical condition,” to avoid “serious, permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ of a pregnant woman,” or if two doctors agree that an unborn baby would not survive after birth. In such cases, a physician must “make reasonable medical efforts under the circumstances to preserve both the life of the mother and the life of her unborn child in a manner consistent with reasonable medical practice,” per its 2006 trigger law.
As a result, the state reported fewer than 10 abortions in 2023 and 2024, and for the past four years has resisted efforts to weaken the law with rape and incest exceptions.
But Live Action reported that Planned Parenthood announced on June 24 that it intends to open a new location in New Orleans by the end of the year under the umbrella of the Planned Parenthood Great Plains affiliate. “The return of care underscores Planned Parenthood’s commitment to remaining in the South to meet people where they are and create more pathways to accessing high-quality health care for as many communities as possible,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America chief Alexis McGill Johnson claimed.
The location is slated to provide contraception, sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, cross-sex hormones for the gender-confused, pregnancy testing, perimenopause and menopause treatment, vasectomy, cancer screenings, and more. It will not perform abortions directly but rather help with travel arrangements to pro-abortion states.
Thirteen states ban most abortions starting at conception; another five ban it once a fetal heartbeat can be detected (around six weeks), with additional states imposing a range of later restrictions.
But the abortion lobby works feverishly to preserve abortion “access” via deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and enshrining abortion “rights” in state constitutions via activist lawsuits or state constitutional amendments.
The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute’s latest report includes full-year estimates for all abortions committed by clinicians and interstate abortion travel in 2025, counting 142,000 total abortions committed for women traveling across state lines last year. Illinois had the biggest share at 32,000 abortions for non-residents, followed by 18,000 in North Carolina, 14,000 in Kansas, 10,000 in New Mexico, and 9,000 in Virginia.