- The Tulsa Women's Clinic in Oklahoma has mostly sat empty since
abortion was outlawed here in May 2022. - Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, the clinic is packing up for good.
At around nine a.m. on Friday, a patient was filling out paperwork at the Tulsa Women's Clinic and waiting to be escorted into an ultrasound room.
That's when Tiffany Taylor, the clinic's supervising nurse, got the text: "'Roe just fell."
Abortion has been mostly banned in Oklahoma since last month, but this was an even bigger blow. Taylor gave the patient the same advice she's been giving hopeful patients in this no-longer-an-abortion-clinic for weeks: There are no options for you in the state of Oklahoma. The best bet was Kansas, a three and a half hour drive to Wichita. You need to do it quickly. If you wait too long, you will have to go to Colorado.
"Honestly, I'm just shattered. I am absolutely shattered. My belief in the system is shattered. My belief in good prevailing over evil is shattered," Taylor said in an interview a few hours after Dobbs v. Jackson Women's
"If you don't have enough money for birth control, you sure as hell don't have enough money to go out of state, and by the time you get an appointment out of state right now, you're gonna be so far along," she said. "You're looking at thousands of dollars."
In both Kansas and Colorado — the two states where Taylor directed patients — abortions are available through the second trimester, and in Colorado medically indicated abortions can be obtained for the duration of the pregnancy.
'Just basic healthcare'
Tiffany Taylor has been a nurse since 2004 and spent most of her career in emergency medicine.
She got into this line of work after she took someone she cared about to the clinic for an abortion and was shocked to see anti-abortion protesters harassing the patients.
She met a group of volunteers who escort women from their cars to the clinic and distract the protestors and, then and there, she signed up to become an escort. Four years ago, seeing the important work that nurses did in these clinics, she started working part time at Tulsa Women's Clinic. She came on full time last April.
"To me, abortion care is just basic healthcare. It's just basic healthcare, and it saves lives," said Taylor. "Most women know what they are capable of and what they are not. If somebody comes to you and says, 'I have four kids, I'm 22 years old, I cannot have another child, I can't afford it, I don't have the capacity for it' — they know themselves. And they should be trusted to make that decision. I wanted to be there to help support that decision, and make sure that those people are able to live the rest of their life in a fulfilled manner."
'What am I supposed to do?'
For most of Tiffany Taylor's time at the Tulsa Women's Clinic, a busy day meant they would provide abortion care to about seven to twelve patients. Most of the time, the clinic dispensed pills. One to two times per month a doctor would come in to provide procedural abortions.
Business as usual first began to change in September 2021, when Texas passed SB8, which banned abortion after around the sixth week of pregnancy. Tulsa, which was for many Texans the closest point of abortion access, was overwhelmed with women crossing the state line to find care.
"We increased our patient visit by about 300%," said Taylor. They're still catching up on the paperwork. "We were just inundated with patients."
But the political situation in Oklahoma itself would change in May, when Gov. Kevin Stitt signed into law a ban on abortion from the moment of conception. The clinic continued care until the last possible moment. A doctor was assisting four patients even as the vote was in process.
"She was giving them their pill as they were voting on that bill," said Taylor.
In the weeks since, the clinic has been mostly empty. Taylor comes in each morning, unlocks the door, turns on the light, and opens up the blinds — she loves the sunshine, she said, but open blinds also let her keep an eye on the anti-abortion protestors who usually assemble in her parking lot. She grabs some coffee and gets to work catching up on paperwork from the Texas influx.
Sometimes, just like on Friday morning, someone seeking an abortion will walk in. Taylor's job, in these moments, is to break the
"They would come in wanting to get information and make an appointment for an abortion, so we need to explain that to them," Taylor said. "Which is really difficult, because if you are so busy with your life that you don't even know that abortion has been outlawed in Oklahoma even before Roe fell, clearly your you've got a lot on your plate."
"These women oftentimes would just burst into tears and ask, you know, What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to handle this?"
As the country waited for the Supreme Court's decision, after a draft of it leaked in early May, Taylor's been going through the office, trying to figure out which medical supplies are salvageable and should be transferred out-of-state.
She looks at the treatment beds and remembers the women she has helped, the stories that people told her about why they were getting an abortion. She thinks, with fear, that people are not going to stop getting pregnant because they no longer have access to abortion.
"It's just making it so much harder. It's heartbreaking," she said. "It is heartbreaking to be in a big, empty, quiet clinic that two months ago, we were so busy, we had people sitting on the floor waiting for their appointment."
"We're basically saying that the Supreme Court knows you better than you know yourself, and they know what is appropriate for you. Women are gonna die. Children are gonna be abused and neglected. It's gonna be a horror show."
The end of the road
At around four in the afternoon, Taylor closes up shop, shuts the blinds, and goes home. For the Tulsa Women's Clinic and the women it's served, this is the end of the road. Help is not on the way.
"There is nothing. We have a super majority of Republicans in our state government. There is no support here for Oklahoma women, zero. We just sent a woman to jail for four years for having a miscarriage. Like we don't have the support here to do anything. We're just, we're helpless. And that's a really awful feeling," said Taylor.
She's heard rumors that the Secretary of Health is planning to revoke the medical licenses for abortion clinics, just to ensure they won't be able to provide any womens' health services whatsoever.
"Which is just insane, we weren't gonna be able to provide services anyway. There's no real need to revoke our license."
"There's no support coming," said Taylor. "I think it'll be decades before Oklahoma sees legal abortion again."