Bristol, TN, Abortion Clinic Beats State Ban By Moving A Mile Across Town To Bristol, VA

BRISTOL, TN — The women’s health clinic in Bristol, Tennessee, had an option not available to similar facilities in other states that implemented complete or near total bans on abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade,

Bristol, an Appalachian mountain community with a population of about 17,750, is in either Tennessee or Virginia, depending on which side of State Street one stands. The twin cities aren’t discernibly different, but state laws on abortion access are night-and-day different.

Tennessee has one of the strictest abortion laws in the country. The law not only bans abortions without exception, but subjects doctors who perform the procedure to Class C felony charges punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

So, in anticipation of the Tennessee law’s effective date of Aug. 25, Bristol Women’s Regional Women’s Center moved to Virginia, just a mile up the road, Diane Derzis, who owns the facility, told Reuters. Otherwise, Derzis said, women seeking an abortion would have had to travel 80 miles to a clinic.

Virginia restricts second-trimester abortions to licensed hospitals, and allows third-trimester abortions only if the procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother. Virginia women seeking abortions also must undergo an ultrasound before the procedure.

The Tennessee abortion law workaround is emblematic of the extraordinary steps abortion rights advocates are taking in the post-Roe vs. Wade landscape. The court returned abortion access to the states to decide in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, resulting in a patchwork of state laws that make it nearly impossible for women in large chunks of the country to get an abortion.

Tennessee, for example, is among 11 Republican-led states with trigger ban laws that took effect in the weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision. Nine of them are contiguous states in the South.

Derzis, who owned the health center in Jackson, Mississippi, at the center of the Dobbs case, told Kaiser Health News that she was approached by a doctor at the Bristol clinic with the idea of the Virginia location. She said she’s committed to helping people across the Southeast who have lost access to abortion.

“It’s like a game of dominoes. It’s just a huge swath of states not offering the service any longer,” Derzis told the health news outlet. “So those women have to go north or west.”

The clinic’s move to Bristol, Virginia, may not be a permanent solution, according to Dr. Howard Herrell, an OB-GYN doctor in Greeneville, Tennessee, and the incoming chair of the state’s chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

“All of that is dependent upon what might happen with laws over time in Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia,” he said.

But Bristol, whether the part in Tennessee or the part in Virginia, is still the same town, a conservative stronghold in large part uneasy with the idea of an abortion clinic on either side. Joe Biden won Virginia’s electoral votes with a comfortable 10 percentage point advantage, but Donald Trump won 68 percent of the vote in Bristol, Virginia.

Opposition ranged from the outright repudiation of abortion for philosophical reasons to discomfort with the public nature and disruption of abortion protests, Reuters reported.

Abortion foe Erika Schanzenbach, whose protests outside the Bristol, Tennessee, clinic have led to civil lawsuits, plans to picket at the new clinic. She has already dusted the Virginia side of the city with flyers asking residents to call and complain to city officials and the owner of the building.

“As we were informing people about this clinic coming to their neighborhood, there were quite a few people that didn’t know,” Schanzenbach told Kaiser. “A lot of people don’t want it in their neighborhood.”

Chris Harber, who lives next door to the new clinic, said protesters wave graphic signs that aren’t appropriate for his 8-year-old-son to see.

“One of them said, ‘child baby sacrifice center’ and had an arrow pointing there,” the 34-year-old Harber told Reuters. “When he sees that, he’s going to ask me, ‘What do they mean?’ I don’t want to have to explain that to him.”

Bristol, Virginia, Mayor Anthony Farnum told Kaiser told dozens of people who called or emailed him, which he said was “a lot for a city this size,” there’s nothing the city can do to stop the clinic.

“It’s really more of a state decision. And currently, right now, the state law is that it is legal to operate that in the state,” Farnum told Kaiser Health News. “Our hands are sort of tied. We don’t really have anything to vote on.”

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who was elected in 2021, vowed to “protect life” after the Supreme Court handed down its opinion. He has previously voiced support for the so-called “pain threshold legislation” that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks.

If Republicans can win a majority in the state Senate in the upcoming Nov. 8 elections, the GOP will be fully in control of the state Legislature. If that happens, Virginia abortion laws could change quickly.

“That’s certainly a concern, ” Derzis, who also owns a clinic in Richmond, Virginia, told Reuters. “The hope is that women can speak for themselves on Election Day.”