Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountain’s efforts to reopen its Durango clinic come amid an increasingly difficult landscape for reproductive health providers in southwest Colorado and rural communities like it around the country.

Tracy Anselmo, director of the La Plata County Public Health Department, said because Durango is the largest municipality in the area outside of Farmington, New Mexico, people seeking health care come from all over the Four Corners region.

“The landscape in the southwest part of the state related to sexual and reproductive health is quite grim,” Anselmo said.

After being shuttered for just over a year, the Durango Planned Parenthood clinic will reopen this month for two days a week.

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Democratic state Representative Katie Stewart, who lives in Durango, said southwest Colorado has “a limited number” of hospitals that offer birthing services and reproductive health care, “so Planned Parenthood has been pretty integral in making sure people have access.”

Stewart has driven to Denver from Durango several times for health care herself, which she said creates a burden that takes time away from her family and work. Having the Durango Planned Parenthood clinic open again will be “really wonderful for southwest Colorado” as fewer people will need to make the trek out of town.

When the Durango clinic closed, she said she was in close contact with Planned Parenthood leaders who wanted to ensure their patients continued to have access to care.

“Planned Parenthood really stepped up, and they didn’t want to leave patients in Durango without an alternative, so they did transition a number of their Durango patients to their virtual care center during the site closure,” Stewart said.

Without the Durango Planned Parenthood, most patients in the area transferred their care to telehealth or a different local provider, said Adrienne Mansanares, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.

It closed as a result of “the impact of COVID on the labor market” in September 2024, she said. Around the country, Planned Parenthood clinics have announced permanent closures, often due to hostile federal and state policies. And the demand on other local providers has increased with changing policies affecting Planned Parenthood’s ability to provide care in the Four Corners region.

County public health administrators had just started talking about offering sexual health services at their clinic when the Durango Planned Parenthood clinic closed. Anselmo said it was key for those in need of reproductive health care in the area.

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“There’s just been a lot of change for southwest Colorado around reproductive and sexual health that have really necessitated us to step up our game here,” Anselmo said.

The closure also coincided with the local Title X family-planning provider declining to renew its contract and a prominent OB-GYN clinic closing. The county public health office was not prepared for the demand it would face for its brand new services, Anselmo said, some of which used to be provided by Planned Parenthood.

Tiffani Roberts, the county’s health access programs manager, says the clinic now offers various forms of contraception, sexually transmitted infection testing, vaccines and cancer screenings.

Just over 1,400 patients went to the Planned Parenthood in Durango for health care before it closed, about 20 percent of whom specifically sought abortion care, most often medication abortion.

When the clinic reopens this month, a nurse practitioner who works at the Cortez Planned Parenthood clinic will commute to Durango in the short-term, but Mansanares said the goal is to hire a full-time nurse practitioner.

The La Plata County Public Health Clinic does not offer abortion care, and without the Planned Parenthood clinic up and running, people in need of in-person abortion care have had to travel to New Mexico or the Front Range, Roberts said.

The clinic in Cortez is 45 miles from Durango, or just under an hour drive, and Planned Parenthood operates another in Farmington, which is 50 miles away. PPRM spokesperson Fawn Bolak said neither saw an increase in the rate of abortion care sought after the Durango clinic closed last year.

Colorado and the national fight over funding

During its recent special session, the Colorado Legislature approved money to cover Medicaid reimbursements to reproductive health care organizations, namely Planned Parenthood, whose federal Medicaid funding was eliminated for a year by the recent federal Republican tax break and spending cut law.

Republicans in Congress included a one-year prohibition against federal Medicaid dollars going to Planned Parenthood in their “big, beautiful” law, which President Donald Trump signed in early July. A federal appeals court allowed the provision to take effect last month after a lower court temporarily paused it.

The freeze on Medicaid reimbursements led to canceled appointments and delayed care for patients “who already face long travel distances and limited provider options,” Bolak said. She said the law allowing the use of state funds is “a critical lifeline” for Medicaid recipients who rely on Planned Parenthood in Colorado, but workforce shortages and increased housing costs still present challenges for rural communities, among other issues “that are only getting worse” under Trump.

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The La Plata County clinic saw an uptick in patients seeking sexual and reproductive health care soon after the Durango Planned Parenthood clinic closed, Roberts said, and again in July once remaining Planned Parenthood clinics could no longer accept Medicaid. The county applied for grant funding through the Caring For Colorado Foundation specifically to increase rural access to contraceptive care as the clinic saw increased demand once it started offering those services.

Roberts said the county clinic has worked with the Planned Parenthood clinics in Farmington and Cortez as they saw an influx of shared patients seeking care covered by Medicaid after the July freeze on Medicaid reimbursement for Planned Parenthood. Collaboration in small communities like Durango is much more prevalent than in larger communities “because we have to,” Anselmo said.

“We’re all really out here to help our community members get the services that they need, so we reach as far as we can into every single crack and beat the bushes as much as we can to make sure that people are getting what they need to maintain their health,” Anselmo said.

Democrats in the Legislature are proud of their work in the special session to create a state fund for Medicaid recipients seeking care from Planned Parenthood, Stewart said, as legislators “should absolutely be supporting people and their access to health care.” But she said other health care cuts in the federal spending bill will be felt in rural Colorado.

“Our health care system in the United States and Colorado, it’s an ecosystem, so having access in rural Colorado means it’s better for the entire state,” Stewart said. “Patients can stay in their communities and get care there versus driving hours, whether it’s to Grand Junction or Denver to get that care. It just keeps the health ecosystem healthier.”

Job vacancies in rural areas can be “really challenging” to fill, Mansanares said, which is why the Durango clinic had to close after the nurse practitioner who previously worked full-time at the clinic changed jobs.

“Planned Parenthood is a beloved partner and community presence for Durango, but the issues for our candidates were about the housing crisis and how expensive it is to live in that area,” Mansanares said. “We do have some providers that live all throughout the Four Corners region, but then when winter comes, it can just be dangerous or uncertain in driving.”

The health care provider shortage is amplified particularly for reproductive and sexual health care by anti-abortion advocates and “extremist politics, and certainly now with Trump,” Mansanares said.

Reopening the Durango clinic “has been a long journey” that Bolak said “is about honoring our commitment to rural communities and ensuring that everyone — regardless of where they live — can access the high-quality, compassionate care they deserve.”