LOUISVILLE, Ky. As states across the nation enact increasingly aggressive restrictions on abortion, perhaps nowhere has the political climate shifted as much as here in Kentucky, where the E.M.W. Womens Surgical Center, a squat tan brick building on Market Street, is the states sole abortion clinic.
Over the past year, Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican who calls himself unapologetically pro-life, has blocked a new Planned Parenthood clinic from performing abortions, shuttered E.M.W.s satellite clinic in Lexington and threatened to close the existing one in Louisville. Backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the clinic has sued the state; a trial is set for September.
The governors forceful moves have rattled reproductive rights advocates, made him a hero among abortion opponents and prompted both sides in the debate to ask a question: Could Kentucky become Americas only state to lack a single abortion clinic?
Kentucky literally stands on the verge of making redemptive history, said the Rev. Rusty Thomas, director of Operation Save America, a Dallas-based anti-abortion group that will host its annual national meeting in Louisville in July. It could be the first surgically abortion-free state in the United States of America.
Dr. Ernest Marshall, 66, who founded E.M.W. in 1981 and has performed abortions here for 37 years, portrayed the situation from his perspective this way: We are under assault.
Across the country, the number of abortion providers has been steadily dropping for decades, partly because of better access to birth control which means fewer unplanned pregnancies, and thus fewer abortions but also because of restrictions that make it difficult for clinics to stay open.
Kentucky, which had 17 abortion providers in 1978, is today among seven states the others are North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Mississippi, Wyoming and West Virginia with just one.
