Before S.B. 8, Texas provided an average of 53,000 abortions every year. Now, the four clinics in Oklahoma are picking up the pieces by providing care for both Texans and Oklahomans. The two Planned Parenthood clinics in Oklahoma saw 35 patients from Texas between September and November 2020 — and 653 Texans during that same period in 2021.

“Trying to absorb all of these additional patients has been hard,” Yap said, noting that Oklahoma is a small state with only a few providers…

“Once you enter the clinic, on the busy days, there are usually a bunch of people in the waiting room already,” Yap said. “We often triple- or double-book our schedule to be able to accommodate as many people as possible. Since S.B. 8 … as much as 75% of my patients are from Texas. So, oftentimes, we have more patients from Texas than we do from our home state of Oklahoma.”

On average, Yap sees about 30 patients a day. The clinic also offers birth control, STI testing and other sexual health care services, but the majority of Yap’s days are focused on abortion care. His schedule accommodates around 12 surgical abortions a day, but he’ll sometimes see a few more patients. On one of the busiest days, Yap estimates that about one-third of the clinic’s patients had surgical abortions, while the rest received medication abortion.