Feminist Women’s Health Center, one of the state’s largest remaining abortion clinics, saw a 20% increase in appointments during the past week when the state’s law was temporarily stricken from the books.
Appointments at the clinic last week began earlier in the morning than they had in a while to allow medical professionals more time to see patients. The parking lot filled up more quickly, too.
And while the facility draws protesters year-round, more people came throughout the week to voice their disagreement with abortion.
Earlier that week, Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney struck down the state’s abortion law banning most abortions once medical professionals can detect fetal cardiac activity, which is typically about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant.
It wasn’t the first time McBurney had set aside the law, which was passed by the General Assembly in 2019 but took effect in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned constitutional protections guaranteeing abortion as a right.
Two years ago, he blocked the law on technicalities in the process, but the Georgia Supreme Court overturned that ruling. This time McBurney found the law to be unconstitutional.
As in 2022, the state asked the Georgia Supreme Court to put the law back on the books while it appealed the lower court’s decision. And, as in 2022, the Supreme Court obliged.
Just as quickly as patients had flocked to the clinic, the ground shifted again.
“It is cruel that our patients’ ability to access the reproductive health care they need has been taken away yet again,” center Executive Director Kwajelyn Jackson said after the Supreme Court stayed McBurney’s order, putting the state abortion law back into effect.
“Once again, we are being forced to turn away those in need of abortion care beyond six weeks of pregnancy and deny them care that we are fully capable of providing to change their lives,” she said. “This ban has wreaked havoc on Georgians’ lives, and our patients deserve better.”
Oct. 1, the day after the state’s abortion law was no longer being enforced, there were 44 appointments at Feminist. Fourteen of those were for surgical abortions, and the remaining 30 were there to obtain abortion pills.
By Friday, the clinic had 53 scheduled appointments. Forty-three were surgical, and of those, 14 patients knew they were beyond six weeks of pregnancy. It was the first time since the law took effect in 2022 that journalists observed visibly pregnant women going in for appointments.
Clinic leadership told staff not to make any Monday appointments for patients who knew they were too far along in pregnancy to receive an abortion under the state’s 2019 law.
That proved to be prescient. On Monday morning, the Supreme Court ruled abortions had to cease at 5 p.m.
At another Atlanta clinic, an ultrasound technician named Suki said she and other staff called people she recently had to turn away and scheduled them for appointments if they still wanted to terminate their pregnancies. Suki, who declined to be identified with her last name out of concern for the safety of herself, her family and her workplace, has been an ultrasound technician since 2004 and said she has worked for abortion clinics for the past 13 years. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also interviewed her last year for a story on the role ultrasound technicians play under the state’s abortion law.
“Today was an amazing day because I didn’t have to turn anybody away,” Suki said in an interview last week. “After I told them they were past six weeks (of pregnancy), they were like ‘I can still be seen, right?’ They were so happy that they wouldn’t have to travel if they still wanted or needed to terminate.”
Back at the filling parking lot at Feminist Women’s Health Center on Friday, Jason Cantrell was again one of a growing group of people who gathered to protest. Clinic staff said the group had been picking up more and more protesters throughout the week.
Cantrell, a Houston County resident who travels two hours to the clinic three times a week to discourage women from getting abortions, says he is doing God’s work by trying to persuade patients not to go through with their abortions.
“Ma’am, why does your baby have to die? You drive a nice car,” Cantrell said into an amplifier. “Ma’am, you don’t have to be a killer today. You can choose God.”
Several people checking in for their appointments Friday, many of them couples said what Cantrell was doing was not a representation of the God they knew.
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