Last Abortion Clinic in Kentucky Fights to Stay Open

Kentucky’s lone abortion clinic is bracing for a legal fight against health regulators and the state’s anti-abortion governor.

The stakes are high: If the EMW Women’s Surgical Center in downtown Louisville loses, Kentucky will become the first state in the nation with zero abortion clinics.

The showdown starts Wednesday at 9 a.m. in a Louisville federal courtroom and centers around a state law that requires EMW to have agreements with a local hospital and an ambulance service for its patients, in the event of an emergency.

State regulators say those services are necessary for women’s health and claims EMW is not in compliance with the law.

But EMW says it has had agreements with a hospital and an ambulance company on file for years, and says they were told “out of the blue” that they weren’t following the letter of the law.

Image: Meg Stern, left, and other escort volunteers line up outside the EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, July 17, 2017. Image: Meg Stern, left, and other escort volunteers line up outside the EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, July 17, 2017.

Meg Stern, left, and other escort volunteers line up outside the EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, July 17, 2017. Dylan Lovan / AP

The fight began in March, when Gov. Matt Bevin’s office informed EMW that it was not in compliance with state rules. The clinic called the move “blatantly unconstitutional” in a lawsuit seeking an injunction, and said, if EMW was forced to close, “Kentucky women would be left without access to a critical and constitutionally protected medical procedure.”

Related: Kentucky’s Last Abortion Clinic Sues State to Stay Open

“This is absolutely just another attempt to ban abortion in Kentucky,” EMW attorney Donald L. Cox told NBC News at the time.

Bevin is a vocal abortion opponent who has called himself an “unapologetically pro-life individual.” He has been at odds with EMW since his election in 2015.

A spokeswoman for Bevin defended his requirements for the clinic ahead of the trial.

“Essentially all health care facilities in Kentucky are required to have such agreements, and it is telling that the abortion industry believes that it alone should be exempt,” Amanda Stamper told the Associated Press.

The clinic is a daily site for protesters, said Christina, a clinic escort who is part of a group of volunteers who offer to walk alongside patients as they enter EMW. She asked to only be identified by her first name out of concerns for her safety.

“They call the escorts Nazis, the doctors murderers, the people walking into the clinic murderers,” Christina said of some of the protesters. Others, she added, line the sidewalk outside the clinic chanting prayers, or stuff pro-life pamphlets into patients’ pockets as they pass by.

Related: Texas Abortion Restrictions Blocked by Federal Judge

The clinic is desperately needed in Kentucky, Christina added.

“There are people in this state who already drive three or four hours to get to Louisville. Why should someone have to drive six or seven hours to get a medical procedure that’s legal in all 50 states?” she asked.

EMW’s legal team believes the case “falls squarely” within a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Texas regulations that required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and forced clinics to meet certain standards for outpatient surgery. The Supreme Court has found that access to an abortion must be guaranteed, but it remains to be seen whether eliminating every clinic in a single state would pass that test.

“Will we build on the momentum of last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding abortion rights?” said Dr. Ernest Marshall, who opened the clinic in the early 1980s. “Or will Kentucky be the harbinger of a future where the right to abortion only exists if you live in the right zip code?”