A new clinic on Columbus’s north side is providing women’s health services including medication that causes abortions. Some, including anti-abortion advocates, are calling it an abortion clinic. But the organization that lobbies on behalf of abortion providers says it isn’t.
NARAL Pro Choice Ohio’s Kellie Copeland says the new Your Choice Healthcare clinic on Columbus’s north side provides health screenings and offers drugs to cause early stage abortions but doesn’t provide surgical services. And that, she says, is why it’s not considered by her organization to be an actual abortion clinic.
"When we talk about the count of the number of abortion clinics in Ohio, we are talking about the clinics that have to be licensed by the Ohio Department of Health and provide the full spectrum of abortion care.”
But Copeland says the new clinic will try to get a license to do surgical abortions and already has ties with a full-service provider in Columbus that is temporarily closed. Copeland says there are eight full-service abortion clinics in Ohio today, down from 16 in 2011.