For 30 years, I have
worked in reproductive health care. In my current role as Chief Operating
Officer of carafem, a nonprofit with a national network of health centers, I
know the difference compassionate and comprehensive reproductive health care
makes in the lives of our clients. I have witnessed the personal impact when
people who have the legal right to have a child or to have an abortion are denied
those rights due to outrageous societal barriers. Abortion providers are used
to opposition, but we’ve never experienced the kind of explicit targeting we
received from politicians in the city of Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. It took the
local politicians less than 48 hours after we opened our doors to try and shut
us down, but after serving the community for the past nine months with services
limited by politics, today, we’re fighting back in court.
At carafem, we strive
to expand access to compassionate and convenient abortion care as well as other
reproductive health care services. With offices in three different states, we served
clients in the Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Chicago communities. Late in 2018
we learned that many people in Tennessee were forced to drive hours to reach an
abortion care provider, as we started to see many clients from Tennessee at our
health center in Atlanta, Georgia. We decided then that carafem needed to bring
services to central Tennessee so we looked for space in the area to open our
fourth health center. Soon thereafter, we found an accessible location in the
Nashville suburb of Mt. Juliet, where we could provide medical services in a private,
secure, and professional environment.
We quickly learned
that our presence was not welcomed by city government when we were met with open
hostility by local politicians. But, unlike many politicians who seek to
restrict access to abortion, Mt. Juliet’s public officials did nothing to even
attempt to hide their intent or political agenda. Instead, they promised loud
and clear to do whatever they could to prevent individuals from exercising
their legal right to abortion.
One city commissioner
stated, “The members of the commission I have
talked to are 100 percent behind shutting this abomination down.” Another said, “I was disgusted to hear they plan to open in my district
and my town. If there is anything we can legally do to keep them from opening
in Mt. Juliet, we will do it.”
These politicians
immediately followed through on their threats. As soon as Mt. Juliet’s zoning
commission got word that we had opened a health center, it convened and amended
its zoning code to treat surgical abortion care providers differently from all
other medical services. In effect, the new ordinance makes it impossible for us
to offer surgical abortion care within city limits.
We are still able to provide
medication abortion in Mt. Juliet and have provided care to hundreds of clients
in this office — but medication abortion isn’t an option for everyone, and
we’ve been forced to turn away many clients who need aspiration, or surgical,
abortion care. The provision of aspiration abortion is central to carafem’s
mission of ensuring full access to reproductive health care.
It’s clear that this ordinance
is yet another attack by hostile politicians on reproductive rights. If this
zoning ordinance remains in place, Mt. Juliet politicians will have prevented
us from providing comprehensive care options to our clients and will have
denied our clients the right to choose what is medically best for them. Those
seeking a procedure will be forced to travel elsewhere to access the kind of abortion
care they want or need — care that we could otherwise provide.
This is not just
wrong — it’s illegal. We are filing this lawsuit with the ACLU because we will
not be intimidated. The people of central Tennessee deserve access
to safe, comprehensive abortion care — rather than having their options limited
by some political agenda. Mt.
Juliet officials have tried their best to stop us, but we have decided to
fight.