The small city of Bristol is now the frontline of the abortion debate | The Excerpt

On a special episode of The Excerpt podcast: Bristol is a small Appalachian city that has become a microcosm of the national abortion debate. That’s because Bristol has a state line running through it – Virginia to the north, where abortion is legal, and Tennessee to the south, where it was outlawed after Roe v. Wade was overturned. USA TODAY Health Reporter Adrianna Rodriguez visited the city after the ban in Tennessee went into effect to document the impact on its residents.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, March 27th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Bristol is a small Appalachian city that's become a microcosm of the national abortion debate. That's because Bristol has a state line running through it, Virginia to the north where abortion is legal, Tennessee to the south where it was outlawed after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Our guest today, USA Today health reporter Adrianna Rodriguez, visited the city after the ban in Tennessee went into effect to document the impact on its residents. Thanks for being on The Excerpt Adrianna.

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Thank you for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Can you please start us out by describing Bristol? What kind of city is it and how did it change after abortion was banned in Tennessee?

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Yeah, so Bristol is a town, it's a small town, quaint town in sort of the Appalachian Mountains. It has a very rich history. It is the birthplace of country music. People like to go there and visit to hike and to see the beautiful scenery. They like to visit downtown. They like to go onto State Street. That marks the divide between the two states and sort of hop across the street to be in two different states, right? People like to go there to retire because it's more of like a slower pace of life. And so before Roe fell, I feel like Bristol was Virginia and Tennessee's best kept secret. But that changed in 2022 because what happened was after Dobbs decision and Roe fell, Tennessee had decided to ban abortion. And so that wanted to affect shortly after Roe fell. And having different laws between the two states isn't really that... it's not a new concept of Bristol.

Tennessee has different gun laws than Virginia, they also have different marijuana laws. But what makes this different is that now there was this vacuum of abortion care in the area, and providers decided to open a new clinic on the Virginia side where abortion was still legal called Bristol Women's Health. And so that became the destination for people who are seeking abortion services. And while they thought, "Okay, this would be the destination for that sort of Appalachian area for Tennessee," they didn't realize at the time that so many states below Virginia were also going to ban abortion, or at least severely restrict it like the Carolinas, Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. All of those states had severely restricted or banned abortion shortly after Roe fell. And so people in those states began traveling to Bristol, Virginia, and that sort of put Bristol in the forefront or on the map really, of this national debate.

Dana Taylor:

It's been less than two years since that health clinic opened on the Virginia side. Adrianna, can you give us a sense by the increase in patients, changes in services, pressures on city council of what this shift has been like for the people who live and work in Bristol?

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Yeah, I mean, with every abortion clinic you're going to have protesters, but I think what made this different was that it attracted a lot of national players, a lot of big national players, both on the anti-abortion and the abortion activist side that decided to take arms really in Bristol and fight this national battle within this small town.

Dana Taylor:

So what have you heard specifically from anti-abortion activists about how they're challenging the clinic and its services?

Adrianna Rodriguez:

So a lot of those big national players that are coming from outside of Bristol began challenging abortion through the city council, trying to introduce zoning ordinances that we had seen in other places in the country to limit and restrict abortions. So there was this one zoning ordinance specifically that basically prohibited the existing abortion clinic, the new one from expanding, and then also prohibited other new abortion clinics from coming into the area.

Dana Taylor:

How about the pro-abortion activists? How has the city changed for them?

Adrianna Rodriguez:

For residents who are abortion rights activists, they saw these national big players with a lot of money coming into the town and trying to push their agenda, and they decided they wanted to form sort of their own alliance and fight within the city council as well, against the zoning ordinance.

Dana Taylor:

You wrote that the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, found that since 2020, Virginia has seen a 75% increase in abortions. That was obviously before Roe was overturned. Why do you think this happened?

Adrianna Rodriguez:

So I think that increase is largely due to the people that are traveling out of state and are traveling from states that banned or severely restricted abortion and came to Bristol or any other places in Virginia to be able to get an abortion. Bristol Women's Health in particular has said that they've seen an increase since they opened. They now see about 150 patients a month, and they also started opening their services during off hours, during evening hours, on weekends to be able to accommodate all those people that are traveling and don't have as much flexibility as somebody nearby.

Dana Taylor:

Can you share some of the conversations regarding abortion that you heard both at Bristol Women's Health Clinic and with other people you spoke with for the story that really stood out to you?

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Something that really stood out to me was really this pushback against the national players that have come to Bristol. Like I said before, Bristol was sort of Virginia's best kept secret for a lot of good and in a positive reasons. And now that it's been sort of pushed into this national stage, and especially on a topic that southern etiquette dictates you don't really talk about has ruffled feathers. People are not happy about being this geographic case study, especially local government and some locals, but the players that really have a stake in it are very passionate about it. The clinic is very passionate about providing these services or an area where there really isn't abortion services or abortion care available. I think the closest one is about two hour drive away in Roanoke, and then the anti-abortion activists are very passionate about getting these services out of the area.

That's really where the town stands is that if you've been impacted by abortion or you know somebody who's been impacted by abortion, you're really in this fight. But the majority of people, local residents of Bristol who really don't want anything to do with it and don't want so many people coming in. Pro-abortion activists are not strangers to conflict because of the nature of abortion in general, in terms of how emotionally charged it is and how divisive it is. They're used to protesters, they're used to people outside of abortion clinics. But I think because there is this national pressure on Bristol that's really heightened the tension in Bristol and for those activists that volunteer as escorts escorting women and pregnant people into the health clinic and stuff like that. I know there was this one woman who had told me about an incident where a man was, I guess so angry with her that he started driving towards her almost threatening to run her over with his pickup truck.

And obviously that's very scary. Obviously that is not the everyday sort of conflict and protest that you see at an abortion clinic, but I think because there is this pressure, this national pressure, it's really heightened emotions. It's really put both sides on alert. I know also the clinic, there's been over 50 calls to the police at the site of the clinic since it first opened, and when I talked to police, they confirmed that it's mostly been calls from either the clinic or the protestors regarding disturbances, protests, security. So just based on that data, it seems like there is a lot of conflict, at least on a weekly basis.

Dana Taylor:

Adrianna, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.

Adrianna Rodriguez:

Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green and Bradley Glanzrock. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.