QNotes: Local abortion provider concerned over Trump Supreme Court pick
Trump ran on anti-abortion rhetoric and claimed he would overturn Roe v. Wade. If his supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is confirmed Trump will have the means to make good on his campaign promise. This is alarming to a Charlotte abortion provider who’s had to deal with almost 20,000 protestors in the past year. She knows abortion is a necessity. Attacks and limitations could mean death for many people. Attacks like this aren’t new, but confirming Kavanaugh would mean a huge negative shift in reproductive rights.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Every day is a new adventure for Calla Hales at East Charlotte’s A Preferred Women’s Health Center in Charlotte. Driving up to her clinic, which offers abortion care, can mean driving past literally hundreds of protesters lining the streets, blocking her clinic’s driveway or, even, stepping out into the street to stop passing cars.
“It’s pretty radical. It’s been going on three years that this has happened,” says Hales, 28, the director of administrative services at this Charlotte center and three more — one in Raleigh and two in Georgia.
By her count, more than 18,500 protesters showed up at her clinic last year alone. Each weekend, the numbers average more than 200 individual protesters in a day.
“I go out there and count them every day,” Hales says. “These sustained high numbers are arguably the highest in the U.S.”
Hales is no stranger to attacks on abortion and reproductive health rights. The past handful of years have certainly exposed her to the increasing tension and tenacity of those who want to restrict abortion access. She’s been threatened, stalked, beaten and raped, all because of her job providing what she says is a critical health care service. Her story and that of her clinics, first established in Raleigh by her parents in 1998, have been profiled locally and nationally.
