Trump’s DOJ Has Put Reproductive Health Clinics Under Threat

With the administration’s refusal to enforce a key law for protecting clinics, abortion providers are bracing for increased disruptions.

Grace Segers
May 29, 2025

Calla Hayes, the executive director of A Preferred Women’s Health Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, is used to protesters. The clinic sees thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators outside of its doors each year; the same group of faces greets her each day.

But in the months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, she’s seen a change in their behavior. Hayes believes that turnover in the White House, along with the Supreme Court decision nullifying Roe v. Wade in 2022, has emboldened the activists outside her clinic’s doors to start “pushing boundaries.”

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/195810/abortion-providers-threats-trump-administration

Two years after Roe’s overturn, there are more abortions in America — but they’re harder to get

Abortion has become more diffuse, thanks to the rise of telehealth and abortion pills. Both are under fire in the courts and state legislatures.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
June 24, 2024

Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of abortions performed in the country is up. But that’s only part of the story. In many places, they are also much harder to get or provide.

Clinicians nationwide provided more than a million abortions in 2023 – the highest in the country’s recorded history — in the first full year since Roe’s fall, according to the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute. That’s the result of a dramatic change in how people get abortions: Rather than receiving clinic-based care in their home states, people are increasingly traveling across state lines, or going online to obtain drug prescriptions. Almost 200,000 people traveled to another state for an abortion. Data from the Society of Family Planning suggests that 1 in 5 are now done through telemedicine, in which a health care professional prescribes and mails abortion pills for a patient to take at home.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/06/two-years-roe-overturn-abortions/

USA – Standing their ground outside the abortion clinic

April 6, 2022
Story by Rachel Crumpler

GREENSBORO — On this Saturday, two groups of people stand watch in the 20-space parking lot of a Japanese steakhouse, each staking out their own territory.

When a car pulls in, often with a woman driving, each group springs to action.

Those wearing rainbow-colored vests motion in the direction of the abortion clinic, guiding drivers to the proper place to park. Others, dressed in navy Sidewalk for Life hoodies, wave, smile and put their hands in a praying position. Some wield signs, such as one reading “God loves you and your baby. We can help.”

Continued: http://mediahub.unc.edu/standing-their-ground-outside-the-abortion-clinic/

For These Abortion Clinic Escorts, The Vitriol From Protesters Has Gotten Way Worse As States Try To Restrict Access

“You never know who’s going to show up when you call 911. Nothing has ever come of it.”

Nicole Fallert, BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on October 16, 2021

Christine is used to being called a witch. As a volunteer escort at EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, she’s accustomed to crowds of anti-abortion protesters shouting the word at her while she accompanies patients into the clinic. “Devil” and “Nazi guard” are also frequently used.

Christine, who has been an escort for eight years, said patients are never prepared for the harassment that awaits them as they attempt to enter the building.

Continued: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolefallert/abortion-clinic-escorts-protesters-concern

Standing Between Care and Violence

Abortion-clinic escorts and defenders serve as human shields protecting patients from angry, aggressive protestors. Now, with emboldened extremists and the COVID crisis, they face more danger than ever before.

By Garnet Henderson
Jun 2, 2021

Shelley, an abortion-clinic defender at Clinics for Abortion and Reproductive Excellence (CARE) in Bellevue, Nebraska, had a bad feeling on the morning of September 25, 2020. One of those gut bad feelings. It had been a volatile summer. Warmer months typically bring more anti-abortion-rights protesters to clinics, and the groups had been even larger than usual in 2020, likely due to high unemployment rates. By September, the crowds had begun to thin back down to the clinic’s 12 to 14 “regulars.” That morning, one of the regulars was camped out in his usual spot at the base of the clinic’s driveway.

Continued: https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a36061740/abortion-clinic-escorts-defenders-face-violence/

Abortion Providers Watching Capitol Violence Say They’ve ‘Seen This Rage Before’

From fire bombings, shootings, and ceaseless harassment, anti-abortion violence has wreaked havoc on clinics for decades.

Jan 8, 2021
Caroline Reilly

Trump supporters laid siege to our nation’s capital on Wednesday, storming past
a flaccid and enabling law enforcement presence in an attempt to stage a coup.
As they were filling the halls of Congress—stealing lecterns and paintings, and
taking selfies at Nancy’s Pelosi’s desk—pundits lamented: This is not America;
this is not who we are. Some even marveled at the cooperation from law
enforcement, wondering how security could have been so lax.

Unfortunately, abortion providers are all too familiar with the sort of
violence that played out at the Capitol.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2021/01/08/abortion-providers-watching-capitol-violence-say-theyve-seen-this-rage-before/

The New Abortion Rights Advocates Are on TikTok

Gen Z activists have been unapologetic and confrontational, a shift in tactics for a movement at a crossroads.

By Jessica Grose
Dec. 10, 2020

In a TikTok filmed in August outside of a women’s health center in Charlotte, N.C., the uncensored version of the mid-1990s novelty rap song “Short, Short Man,” by Gillette blares: “Eenie weenie teenie weenie shriveled little short, short man.”

The camera is focused on a middle-aged white man in sunglasses, who is holding a poster depicting what appears to be a fetus with the word “abortion” printed on it. The caption on the video reads, “don’t worry, the volume was turned all the way up so he could hear :-)”

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/style/abortion-rights-activists-tiktok.html

USA – A Movement Grows Outside of East Charlotte Abortion Clinic

The 'New Feminist' defenders

Ryan Pitkin
September 24, 2020

The video begins with a 19-year-old woman relaxing in a lawn chair outside of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic on Latrobe Drive in east Charlotte where tensions between anti-abortion activists and pro-choice clinic defenders have risen in recent years.

In the video, the 19-year-old clinic defender nonchalantly reads the lyrics to the song “WAP,” which stands for Wet Ass Pussy. She’s talking calmly, but just loud enough to drown out Philip “Flip” Benham, a known religious extremist who has spent nearly 20 years protesting and harassing patients at the east Charlotte clinic. While Benham is usually the loudest man on Latrobe Drive, he looks bewildered by the woman’s confident reading of Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion’s gospel. He continues to read a Bible passage aloud just feet away from her. Continued: https://qcnerve.com/new-defenders-charlotte-abortion-clinic/

Abortion Clinic Protests Are Still Happening in the Pandemic: ‘They Accost Patients Face to Face’

Abortion Clinic Protests Are Still Happening in the Pandemic: ‘They Accost Patients Face to Face’
“They don’t social distance. They block, stalk, push, shove, talk, scream. It’s business as usual out there for them.”

by Carter Sherman
May 26 2020

When Kelly Benzin arrived at the Grand Rapids, Michigan, abortion clinic where she works one recent Wednesday morning, everything seemed normal. Even in the midst of the pandemic, the Heritage Clinic for Women had been drawing about five to 15 protesters a day, she said. One was just setting up his chair as Benzin pulled in.

But around 8 a.m., when the clinic officially opened, Benzin realized that about 25 to 35 people had started to gather outside. Soon, they started to approach patients, handing out roses and trying to talk them out of getting abortions.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/889nnp/abortion-clinic-protests-are-still-happening-in-the-pandemic-they-accost-patients-face-to-face

USA – Abortion Clinics Don’t Want Demonstrators Around, Even If They’re Pro-Choice

Abortion Clinics Don't Want Demonstrators Around, Even If They're Pro-Choice
Inside the fight taking place at U.S. clinics.

by Rebecca Grant
Jul 9 2019

As an abortion rights advocate in a state trying to ban abortion, Helmi Henkin isn't usually in the position of turning away support.

Henkin chairs of the clinic escort program for West Alabama Women's Center in Tuscaloosa, one of the three abortion clinics left in Alabama, and formerly lead communications for The Yellowhammer Fund, the only statewide abortion fund. In May, an anti-abortion protester tried to run over a WAWC escort in the parking lot with an SUV. One week later, Governor Kay Ivey signed an extreme abortion ban into law and, since then, Alabama has been in the national spotlight as a harbinger of what’s to come. Henkin has found that since the law’s signing, pro-choice advocates across the country feel an urgency to do something about it. Some send money, while others want to protect abortion clinics in a more physical way.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzjjk/what-is-abortion-clinic-defense

09.07.2019