Gail Michaelis-Ow outside her Santa Cruz home. The nurse practitioner helped found a Planned Parenthood clinic in Santa Cruz in 1976, and worked there until she was abruptly laid off in July. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

SANTA CRUZ >> Gail Michaelis-Ow was there from the beginning. She was one of half a dozen people who started the Planned Parenthood clinic in 1976, three years after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide and the same year she finished nursing school.

And she was there at the end, on July 24, when the nurse practitioner and all of her coworkers were laid off and given one hour to exit the clinic on Pacific Avenue in Downtown Santa Cruz for the last time.

When the clinic closed without warning, Santa Cruz Local reported that patients were left scrambling to find care, get medications and schedule tests.

Michaelis-Ow said she and her coworkers also had no notice.

“‘The clinic is closing immediately and you have an hour to gather your things’ — and literally they used the words ‘vacate the premises,’” she recalled the representative from Planned Parenthood Mar Monte had told them that morning.

Clinic staff were shocked, some, like Michaelis-Ow, had worked there for decades. But their main concern was for their patients.

“Every day we had lots of referrals for patients, we had questions from patients,” she said. “There were patients waiting for [test] results.”

But upon being informed of the clinic closure, she and her coworkers were already locked out of their computers and email logins, she said, and couldn’t notify patients what was happening.

“What about the inbox? What about the refills? Who’s taking care of our people?” she recalled asking. “And it was kind of like, ‘Well, that’s not your concern anymore.’”

Especially for some of her patients that she had been seeing for more than a decade, Michaelis-Ow said she would have liked to tell them she would no longer be their provider.

“It’s so disrupting when you have a provider that you like and that you’ve been to, and then you have to find somebody new. It’s not easy,” she said. “I also would have wanted to help transition them to a new provider.”

She said all the doctors and staff wanted a little time to say goodbye to each other, some of whom had worked together for more than 20 years.

The Santa Cruz clinic was one of five that closed within the Mar Monte network in July after Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood was cut as part of the Republican-backed budget bill. 

“There were certainly rumors and we all knew, because of the cuts to Medicaid, that there were going to be changes,” she said. “I think I personally just figured there was going to be some discussion.”

Michaelis-Ow is sharing her story now because Planned Parenthood Mar Monte required laid-off employees to sign temporary non-disclosure agreements in exchange for severance pay. 

Representatives of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte did not respond to several requests for comment. Representatives have said previously that though the Medicaid cuts have been challenged in court, the uncertainty was too great to keep the clinics open.

Mar Monte is the largest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country, comprising 30 clinics in California and Nevada. It was formed through a series of mergers in the 1990s with independent clinics, including the one in Santa Cruz that Michaelis-Ow helped start. 

Michaelis-Ow said she wanted to speak out about the closure “because I feel like in some ways, this organization has lost its way,” she said.

Phoenix poses for an anonymous portrait outside the entrance to the shuttered Planned Parenthood clinic on Pacific Avenue in August. Phoenix was one of many patients left scrambling to find care when the clinic closed without notice. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local file)

Her involvement with Planned Parenthood and reproductive health care access began in 1973 when she was still in college at UC Santa Cruz. She went to the county’s Emeline Avenue clinic that offered birth control and met a Planned Parenthood volunteer who was there to explain the options people had. 

She said she was so impressed by that person and drawn to the work that she began volunteering. When the county opened an abortion clinic in 1973 — the year the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide — she began volunteering as a patient advocate. Three years later, the Planned Parenthood clinic opened in Santa Cruz.

“When we started this clinic, we just all were very idealistic and the motivation for all of us was to help people, and help people have choices that they deserve to have,” she said. 

At 73, she said she was close to retiring anyway and has been adjusting just fine, but to end her 50-year career at Planned Parenthood so abruptly and unceremoniously was difficult. 

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion. The impacts were swift, with many states reducing access to abortions.

Planned Parenthood Mar Monte will continue to offer abortions, birth control and reproductive care. When the affiliate announced the five clinic closures in July, it also said it would end primary, mental health and prenatal care at its remaining locations. 

Dena Loijos, chief impact officer for Santa Cruz Community Health, said the federally qualified health center has absorbed several hundred people that had been primary care patients at the Santa Cruz Planned Parenthood clinic. Federally qualified health centers treat everyone regardless of insurance or ability to pay. 

Primary care patients of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Watsonville will also have to find a new provider as Mar Monte phases out those services. 

Read Santa Cruz Local’s guide to finding low- and no-cost health care in the county.

Questions or comments? Email [email protected]. Santa Cruz Local is supported by members, major donors, sponsors and grants for the general support of our newsroom. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support. Learn more about Santa Cruz Local and how we are funded.