Abortion clinics changing states to stay open face an all-out battle to open

Shelley Koch, a longtime resident of Southwest Virginia, had witnessed a similar scene many Sunday mornings after the service. On that day, however, it was taking place in a car park outside a modest Bristol government building, where officials had just unveiled a proposal that threatens to disrupt the fabric of their community.

For months, city residents have been at odds over whether clinics, restricted by tough anti-abortion laws in neighboring Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia, can continue to hop across the border and operate there. The suggestion on the table tabled by anti-abortion activists was that they shouldn’t do it. The local pastors were there to spread this message.

“We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing at this point,” said Koch, who campaigns for abortion rights. “We’re chasing each other all the time.”

The conflict is not unique to this frontier community, which offers a place for a person to stand in Virginia and Tennessee at the same time. Similar disputes have erupted across the country after the US Supreme Court ruled to overturn the landmark 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion.

As clinics in Republican-dominated states with strict abortion bans have been forced to close, some have relocated to cities just across the border in states with more liberal laws. The aim is to help women avoid long distances. But these efforts do not always run smoothly: the policies of border towns and cities do not always coincide with those in their state capitals. They can be more socially conservative, with residents opposed to abortions on moral grounds.

Anti-abortion activists have taken advantage of this sentiment — in Virginia and elsewhere — to propose changes to zoning laws to prevent the clinics from moving in. Since Roe was ousted, such local ordinances have been identified as a tool for officials to control where patients can get an abortion, lawyers and legal experts say.

In Texas, before Roe’s fall, more than 40 cities banned abortion services within their city limits. This trend, led by anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson, has since successfully spread to politically conservative cities in Iowa, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nebraska and Ohio.

Under Roe, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for state or local legislators to create a “significant impediment” to a patient seeking an abortion. This rule no longer exists.

While such zoning changes are no longer necessary in Texas, which now has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, Dickson says he and others will pursue them in other states with liberal abortion laws.

“We will go ahead and do whatever we can to protect lives,” he said.

In New Mexico, which has one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, activists in two counties and three cities in the eastern part of the state have successfully petitioned for zoning changes restricting the procedure. Democratic officials have since proposed legislation to ban them from interfering with access to abortions.

In the college town of Carbondale, Illinois, a state where abortion remains widely available, anti-abortion activists have asked zoning authorities to block future clinics from opening after two were already operating in the town. So far they have been unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, some of the states that have severely restricted access to abortions are trying to make it harder for residents to terminate their pregnancies elsewhere. University of Idaho employees who refer students to a clinic just eight miles away in liberal-minded Washington state could face criminal charges under a recently passed state law.

Perhaps no other place encapsulates the theme as well as the twin cities of Bristol, Virginia and Bristol, Tennessee. Before that, Roe had operated an abortion clinic in Bristol, Tennessee for decades. After Roe, which sparked the Volunteer State’s tough abortion law, the clinic jumped across the state line to Bristol, Virginia.

That’s when anti-abortion advocates began to push back. At the request of some concerned citizens, the social conservative Faith-Based Family Foundation of Virginia helped draft an amendment to the city’s zoning plan that states land other than where the existing clinic is located cannot be used to complete a “pre-treatment.” -born human life.”

“Nobody wants their city to be known as the place where people come to take lives. It’s just not a reputation that people in Bristol want their area to have,” said Foundation President Victoria Cobb.

The change has stalled before the planning commission as the city’s attorney, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and others question its legality. Meanwhile, the board of directors in Washington County, which surrounds Bristol, passed a similarly restrictive zoning ordinance on Feb. 14, and at least three counties have since passed resolutions declaring their “pro-life stance,” according to the Family Foundation.

Before Roe was lifted, such zoning restrictions would have been unconstitutional, ACLU Attorney Geri Greenspan noted. Now, however, “we are entering new legal territory,” she said.

It’s a fight that residents like Koch didn’t expect.

In 2020 — when Democrats were in full control of state government — they lifted restrictions on abortion services and envisioned the state as a safe haven for access. Virginia now has one of the most permissive abortion laws in the South, which brought Koch comfort when Roe was overthrown.

But now her relief has been replaced by fear.

“I realized how little I knew about how local government worked,” she said. “It was a disadvantage.”

Bristol Women’s Health Clinic is fighting several lawsuits but would not be affected by the proposed regulation unless it sought to expand it or make other changes. While some residents oppose the facility, “they are more afraid that this industry will expand and that Bristol will simply become a multi-state center for the abortion industry,” said Rev. Chris Hess, pastor of St Anne Catholic Church used the zone change.

Debra Mehaffey, who has spent more than a decade protesting outside abortion clinics, said people from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia come to Bristol “to get abortions, you know, because they can’t get them in theirs.” can state.”

“So it’s going to be great to see it get phased out entirely,” she said.

Clinic owner Diane Derzis, who has owned numerous other abortion clinics — including the one in Mississippi that was the focus of the recent Supreme Court decision — downplays the pushback. She said she got used to protests and even witnessed the bombing of a separate clinic.

But Derzis also girds himself for many more post-Roe fights in the future.

Abortion “is under attack and will be for years to come,” she said.