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A day after Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed into law the nation's most restrictive new anti-reproductive freedom law, WW has learned that a new private abortion clinic has opened in downtown Portland.
The Lilith Clinic is accepting patients now and will begin providing services March 19, including abortions through the 22nd week of pregnancy. (That is later than other providers, such as Planned Parenthood, which provided abortions through the 18th week.)
The new clinic fills a gap created by the January closure of the Lovejoy Surgicenter in Northwest Portland.
Related: Portland Clinic That Provided Late-Term Abortions for Nearly Five Decades Closed Last Week.
The opening comes at a time of renewed hope among abortion opponents nationally that the U.S. Supreme Court will revisit the issue, after President Donald Trump named Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg last year, giving the court a 6-3 conservative majority.
In a statement he made after signing into law a bill that prohibits abortion unless its necessary to save a mother's life, Gov. Hutchinson said explicitly the goal was to force the court to reconsider Roe v. Wade.
"SB6 is in contradiction of binding precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court, but it is the intent of the legislation to set the stage for the Supreme Court overturning current case law," Hutchinson said, according to National Public Radio.
Ironically, today is National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, a day of remembrance in honor of Dr. David Gunn, who was murdered outside a Florida abortion clinic on March 10, 1993, by a pro-life protester named Michael Griffin.
Grayson Dempsey, the former executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon who is serving as a consultant to the Lilith Clinic, says that private clinics provide the majority of abortions in the U.S., but the number of clinics is declining sharply—down by about a third over the past two years.
Oregon remains one of the states friendliest to abortions. The Democratically controlled Legislature passed the Reproductive Equity Act in 2017, requiring private insurers to pay for abortions, and lawmakers in 2018 required the Oregon Health Plan to pay for abortions for any woman who doesn't have private insurance.
"It's such a victory that we will have this kind of care in Oregon," Dempsey says of the opening of the Lilith Clinic. "We are certainly defying the national trend."