Cc: Wendy Stark, President and CEO

They may forget your name, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

—Maya Angelou, Author, Poet, and Civil Rights Activist (Social Determinants of Health and Health Equity, 2021)

Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) is set to reduce access to abortion care. As of September 3rd, we will no longer offer deep sedation, and our gestational age limit will be reduced from 24 weeks to 19 weeks and 6 days. As of today, access to deep sedation has been reduced to accommodate training for staff who are expected to provide moderate sedation in the absence of contracted anesthesia providers.

These changes have dire consequences for our patients. At this pivotal time in reproductive history, it is immoral and unethical to voluntarily increase barriers to abortion care. 

We are writing to you, the governing board of PPGNY, to demand we continue to contract anesthesia providers in order to safely offer deep sedation to any patient who requests it; and that we continue to provide abortions to patients up to and including 24 weeks without pause. 

The vast majority of procedural abortion patients (80%) opt for deep sedation at PPGNY’s Manhattan center, which is a level of sedation in which a person is put to sleep and does not feel any pain or discomfort. This decision is not the result of political restrictions, is not evidence-based, and will not improve patient outcomes. Rather, this decision is the result of an erroneous belief that what patients may be capable of enduring is an appropriate measure of what they should be made to endure.

Patients with a history of sexual assault who may be triggered, minors for whom a procedural abortion may be terrifying, and those with pre-existing anxiety, PTSD, depression, and other mental health diagnoses, often rely on access to deep sedation in order to proceed with abortions, without exacerbating their pre-existing conditions. It is our belief that what has been proposed could not by any means qualify as trauma-informed care, and therefore is unacceptable.

According to our leadership, in 2023 “only” 282 patients were over 19 weeks and 6 days and, according to them, only a small number of patients will be affected by this change. As healthcare workers, we consider this intolerable collateral damage. 

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, patients travel long distances from their home states to our center for services we will no longer provide. It is deeply upsetting that PPGNY, a national leader for reproductive care, would tarnish the legacy it has long sought to build.

We call on you to enable us to continue to provide safe, humane, trauma-informed, and comprehensive care. We do not believe every option to avoid this failure of reproductive justice has been explored. As employees of PPGNY, we are, first and foremost, advocates for our patients, and deep sedation is something people want and need. We will continue to fight for safe and humane care, no matter what. 

We the clinicians, health care assistants, financial counselors, sonographers, social workers, support staff, and registered nurses ask that the Board direct the PPGNY leadership to renew the anesthesia providers’ contract indefinitely and roll back the changes regarding moderate and deep sedation practices.