Shocking Transformation in Clinics Post-Roe! The Ongoing Battle over Syringe Services Divides Opioid-hit West Virginia

CHARLESTON, West Virginia – The staff at Women’s Health Center of West Virginia knows what it’s like to provide controversial health services that government officials have tried to ban or restrict.

The Charleston clinic was the state sole abortion provider for years until the state Legislature passed a almost total ban about last year’s procedure. The clinic remained open and provided other reproductive care. Now you are trying to open a syringe service program for drug users, which is another litigious health service that has been regulated by Republican lawmakers in the deep red state.

The proposal, which is scheduled to go before the Charleston City Council for a pivotal vote Monday, comes as abortion providers across the country are turning or expanding services after Roe, often to other care difficult access for marginalized communities who they say face stigma. and similar barriers to abortion patients.

Some, like the West Virginia Women’s Health Center, have added gender-affirming services for transgender adults, such as hormone therapy. In addition, the West Virginia clinic and another in Oklahoma are incorporating harm reduction services, which work to mitigate the co-occurring health impacts of intravenous drug use. like HIV.

The Charleston clinic already offers wound care, substance use disorder treatment referrals and drug training to reverse opioid overdose. But he faces an uphill battle in syringe service for West Virginia, the US state with the highest rate of opioid overdoses. In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared Charleston, the state capital, the scene of the nation’s “most concerning HIV outbreak” due to intravenous drug use.

Nearly everyone in West Virginia has been affected by addiction and loss in some way, and many people hold strong beliefs about the best way to treat addiction and those who suffer from it, beliefs that often conflict despite experience. shared.

Pam Stevens, who lost her 44-year-old son Adam to a drug overdose, lives a block from the Women’s Health Center. She believes that the program will inadvertently empower those who are addicted.

At a recent public hearing, he called the idea of ​​locating a longtime abortion clinic needle service program “an abomination.”

“Let the Center for Women’s Health do what it’s supposed to do: provide quality health care to women, not drug addicts who need needles,” Stevens said.

Danni Dineen, who contracted hepatitis C from intravenous drug use, said a syringe service program she attended in the midst of her addiction was about more than having access to needles. Her addiction specialists built a trust and relationship with her and ultimately helped her enter treatment.

Without the needle service, “I honestly and honestly don’t think I would be here in front of you today,” said Dineen, coordinator of city-run services for people struggling with substance use, mental health disorders and lack of of housing.

Syringe service programs work by allowing people to exchange dirty syringes used to inject drugs with clean, sterile ones. They are CDC-recommended methods of slowing the spread of infection and typically offer a variety of services, including referrals for counseling and substance use disorder treatment.

Such programs exist across the country, but they are not without their critics, who say they don’t do enough to prevent drug use. That’s despite CDC research showing that people with needle service are more likely to recover.

West Virginia Health Right in Charleston offers a syringe service, but it is only a small component of the organization’s services, which target underinsured populations. In 2022, for every 100 syringes handed out by a program in the slightly smaller city of Morgantown, home to the state’s flagship university, Health Right handed out fewer than one, according to data compiled by the state.

West Virginia Republican Governor Jim Justice signed a law by 2021, require syringe providers to be licensed by the state and recipients to show proof of residency and return each needle after use.

The Charleston City Council followed with an ordinance requiring programs to collect at least 90% of distributed syringes. Exchange programs that violate the restrictions can be charged with a misdemeanor criminal offense, adding fines of $500 to $1,000 per violation. Programs must also be approved by the county council and commission.

The Women’s Health Center is on the west side of Charleston, an area that has historically seen the highest percentage of overdose emergency calls in the city.

In the year since the abortion ban, CEO Katie Quinonez spearheaded the launch of the Maryland Center for Women’s Health, a sister clinic directly across the state line. Charleston providers can refer people to the Maryland clinic and cover the cost of the procedure using their abortion fund.

Quiñonez’s staff looked for other areas in which they could leverage their medical resources in West Virginia: “Looking at the data, harm reduction was at the top of the list.”

Both practices “respect that people are the experts in what they need and what is best for their lives, that the patient and his body are the most qualified clinician in the examination room,” Quiñónez said.

The program would operate under restrictions outlined in state and city code, but with some provisions intended to make it more accessible, such as allowing people without state-issued IDs to use cards from homeless shelters or rehabilitation.

But some feel one show is more than enough, and the Center for Women’s Health is the last place they want to see another.

Phil Chatting, who described himself as a long-term volunteer at the anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center next to the Center for Women’s Health, said he believes the program would pose a danger to families who come there seeking of resources.

“Are we more interested in providing assistance to drug users than in protecting innocent bystanders?” said Chatting, who is listed as the center’s chief official in December 2022 nonprofit filings. to support his family.”

Anti-abortion sentiment and underlying beliefs still prevail, said Iris Sidikman, harm reduction coordinator at the Center for Women’s Health. During months of touring the neighborhood to discuss the proposal, one resident asked, “So your clinic is going to hand out needles and abortions?”

“That kind of comment shows me that people who didn’t respect the abortion work that we’re doing don’t respect the harm reduction work that we’re doing, either,” Sidikman said.