In Tennessee, Abortion Providers Challenge Two-Day Wait for Procedure

Autumn Katz, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights – which is helping represent the abortion providers – said the abortion clinics will focus their arguments on the facts on the ground and the real-world impacts of Tennessee women. To that end, they lined up eight witnesses to testify during the trial.

The Supreme Court’s 2016 decision Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, according to Katz, directs courts judging an abortion restriction “to weigh the evidence and look at the benefits and the burdens of the law. And if the burdens outweigh the benefits, then the law should be struck down as unconstitutional.”

Matthew Cloutier, from the Tennessee Attorney General’s office responded to the abortion clinic’s pretrial brief by saying the state has an interest in fetal life and maternal health.

“Recognizing the unique status of abortion, the Supreme Court has upheld reasonable regulations—including waiting periods—even where these regulations have made abortions more inconvenient and expensive,” Cloutier wrote.

The Tennessee Legislature passed the law mandating a 48-hour waiting period in 2015, around the time voters amended the state constitution to specify it did not recognize the right to an abortion.

The trial comes at a time when several neighboring states such as Georgia and Alabama have passed laws (quickly challenged in court) restricting abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy or even outright banned the procedure.

Over the summer, earlier in the summer, Tennessee senators held a hearing, considering a ban on abortion that will be taken up in the next legislative session starting in January.

Meanwhile, one of the closest abortion clinics to Chattanooga, the Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health, performs about 1,400 abortions annually. Since lawmakers passed the 48-hour waiting period, the clinic along with others across the state have seen a slow decline in the number of abortions, something Corinne Rovetti, nurse practitioner and co-director at the clinic, said was due to women seeking services out of state.

Rovetti added the lack of an abortion clinic near Chattanooga is a sign of a lack of other services for women’s health.

“Chattanooga has also then been denied an affordable, accessible, family planning and birth control and basic women's healthcare in a clinic setting, in a more accessible way, other than in a private doctor's office,” Rovetti said.

Michele Cheresnick, a director of client services at Choices Chattanooga, a crisis pregnancy center that moved next door to the National Memorial for the Unborn, said the 48-hour waiting period is not unlike the time it takes to undergo any other medical procedure.

“I think it empowers women to not respond emotionally but to respond logically,” Cheresnick said. “Anytime you're in a situation where you think you've got to make a decision right now, you race to the end of that decision rather than take a step back and say 'What really is what's best for me?'"

About 576 people turned to the crisis pregnancy center last month, seeking services such as pregnancy tests and parenting classes.

Mike Jennings, a Chattanooga-based attorney that has dealt with adoption law for about 30 years and helped buy the building belonging to Chattanooga’s former abortion clinic, downplayed Chattanooga’s proximity to an abortion clinic saying it’s common for Chattanoogans to drive to nearby cities to catch sporting events, and women could seek abortion in Georgia, where they can receive an initial consultation by phone, wait 24 hours and receive an abortion in Atlanta.

“It's a high-volume, high-dollar kind of medical practice,” Jennings said.” If you can get a woman in one time, and do everything you need to do, and get her out and collect your money, that's more profitable than having to talk to her twice.”

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan organization researching reproductive health policy once affiliated with Planned Parenthood, there are six states that require 72-hour wait periods.

While abortion rights advocates say striking down Tennessee’s law would increase abortion access for women in the state, anti-abortion advocates such as Jennings worry Tennessee might become a destination for out-of-state women seeking to terminate their pregnancies.

The fate of that law has been assigned to Senior Judge Bernard Friedman. The judge, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, ruled Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage ran contrary to federal law in 2014 and  struck down the federal government’s ban on female genital mutilation last year.

The trial is expected to last a week.

Follow @jcksndnl

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