Baton Rouge resident Brianna Spruel arrived for a routine check-up at the Planned Parenthood clinic on Government Street Tuesday morning.
She was dismayed to learn it was the organization’s last day of operation in the state of Louisiana.
“I’m kind of in shock,” Spruel said.
Planned Parenthood announced it would close its two Louisiana health centers, one in Baton Rouge and one in New Orleans, amid an ongoing legal battle between the national nonprofit and the Trump administration over Medicaid funding for abortion providers. In September, a federal appeals court allowed the “defunding provision” of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that targeted Planned Parenthood to take effect.
In more than 40 years of operation, Planned Parenthood health centers in Louisiana have never provided abortion services. Patients visited the clinics for breast and cervical cancer screenings, emergency contraception, pregnancy testing, STI and STD testing, birth control, hormone therapy and treatment for urinary tract infections.
“We mustered every resource to provide every ounce of health care, education, and advocacy we could for as long as we could — work that mattered deeply and will live on through every patient we cared for and every person we empowered to chart their own future,” Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast President and CEO Melaney Linton said in a statement.
Spruel said the center on Government Street offered basic testing more quickly and conveniently than other health care providers in the area. The provider she plans to use now that Planned Parenthood has closed, Woman’s Hospital, can be up to an hour’s drive from her residence in downtown Baton Rouge during peak traffic, she said.
“Now I’m going to have to go wait for long waits with the doctor’s (office),” Spruel said. “Some Medicaid doctors take way longer than insurance doctors, so some ladies that may need urgent care may have to go to the hospital.”
Shutdown comes amid national anti-abortion push
The closure of Planned Parenthood in Louisiana is the latest in a wave of anti-abortion action pursued by prominent state and national Republicans since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson, effectively overturning its historic Roe v. Wade ruling.
The state of Louisiana is arguing multiple criminal cases against doctors who live out of state and are accused of providing abortion-inducing drugs by mail.
“Planned Parenthood built its business around promoting death,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill wrote on X in August. “Louisiana chooses life. We will always protect women and babies.”
Gov. Jeff Landry also celebrated the announcement back in August that Planned Parenthood would be closing its doors.
“This is a major win for the pro-life movement here in Louisiana,” Landry posted to X. “I have fought hard as Attorney General and now as Governor to rid our state of this failed organization.”
In the Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s statement, Linton said politicians’ attacks on the organization caused the clinics to shut down, not “lack of need.”
“It is the direct result of relentless political assaults that have made it impossible for us to continue operating sustainably in Louisiana,” Linton said.
What’s next in Louisiana?
On Tuesday, a handful of Baton Rouge pro-life advocates stood outside the Catholic Life Center on Acadian Thruway, collecting diaper donations to mark Planned Parenthood’s final day of operation.
They held up signs with the outline of a pregnant woman and the phrase, “love them both.” On the flip side was the graphic of a fetus inside a womb, surrounded by images of pills and scissors, that declared “abortion kills babies.”
“I think a lot of times coming out of Roe v. Wade being overturned and the Dobbs decision and just everything that has happened nationally, there was this conversation or this narrative that the moms are not important,” said Tara Wicker, state co-director for Louisiana Black Advocates for Life. “We want to make sure that the message is that there’s love and support and a village surrounding both moms and the babies.”
Wicker said more pregnant women are contacting Louisiana Black Advocates for Life and similar organizations since the elimination the federal right to abortion and the closing of Planned Parenthood clinics.
“There have been obviously additional folk that are calling, that are seeking resources that are available,” Wicker said.
Spruel said women who previously used Planned Parenthood need to be proactive about their health and start planning for how they will receive the services they need.
“It’ll be another reason for women to have to travel to get fast care,” she said.