Whole Woman’s Health abortion clinic offers ‘hopeful’ haven for the American South

WBrenda Morgan, her blond hair in a braided ponytail, a small gold cross around her neck and dressed in a teal scrubs with frogs drawn on them, was polite but firm as she gave instructions to the staff at her clinic.

People rarely answer their phones if they don’t recognize the number, so you’ll probably want to leave a voicemail, Morgan advised a trio of employees. If you do leave a voicemail, she continued, never say you’re calling from Whole Woman’s Health. Instead, Morgan suggested saying something vague, like, “This is Brenda from your doctor’s office. Please call me back.”

The last thing they want is for the wrong person to hear the voicemail and realize it’s an abortion clinic calling.

The staff looked at the phones on the desk. Protecting a patient’s privacy was paramount, but they had little time to perfect their voicemail technique. Less than 24 hours later, that clinic, the newest addition to the Whole Woman Health network of abortion clinics, would welcome its first patient.

In the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to ban nearly all abortions, more than 100 clinics have stopped providing abortions. New clinics have opened in states that still allow the procedure, but not nearly enough to replace those that have closed. Many of those clinics are also in solidly liberal, northern states.

In contrast, Whole Woman’s Health’s newest clinic—which quietly opened last week—is located in Petersburg, Virginia, in a purple state that rejected a GOP campaign to ban abortion after 15 weeks in the 2023 election but remains governed by a Republican governor. By opening in Petersburg, a small city perhaps best known as the home of some of the final battles of the American Civil War, Whole Woman’s Health is declaring a new front in a war that has once again divided the North from the South: the fight over abortion.

Virginia is likely the last southern state where abortion providers can hope to open new clinics—and the need for southern, or southern-border, abortion clinics has recently metastasized. On May 1, Florida banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, decimating the last southern bastion of abortion access. Women from Florida and neighboring states now have to travel hundreds of miles for abortions.

“We didn’t just open this because of Florida,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Woman’s Health. “We opened this clinic because we know how many people from the region travel here.”

‘You probably should have given up earlier’

For years, Whole Woman’s Health was the face of abortion in Texas, where it operated a handful of clinics. In 2016, the organization was won a U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down several abortion restrictions in Texas. At the time, the decision seemed like a sign that the fight for abortion rights was beginning to turn in their favor.

Eight years later, Roe is gone, and Texas has banned nearly all abortions. Whole Woman’s Health has closed its clinics in Texas, as has another clinic in Indiana that has also banned the procedure.

It was devastating—emotionally and financially. It took more than a year for Hagstrom Miller to sell the buildings where her clinics had operated. (An anti-abortion group later bought (one of the buildings.) Terminating one lease cost her tens of thousands of dollars, she said.

“These operational things are real. They can take down one of the most stable, independent providers in the country — I mean, they almost did it,” said Hagstrom Miller, who likes to dress as loudly as her politics. The day before the Petersburg clinic opened, she wore a yellow-green suit and a necklace that read “ABORTUS.” The bottom of her silver hair was dyed a fiery purple — a signature hue of Whole Woman’s Health, whose walls are usually painted mauve.

Hagstrom Miller continued, “I had to use our organization’s reserves to do all those things, which prevented me from being able to open something in Kansas or figure out how to help people in southern Illinois.”

In recent months, Whole Woman’s Health has tried to open several abortion clinics. One, in New Mexico, opened successfully. But Hagstrom Miller bought a building in Oklahoma — just before the state banned the procedure. “I still have that building,” Hagstrom Miller said. “I’ve had a mortgage on that building — I can’t even tell you how long ago.”

She also bought an abortion clinic practice in North Carolina, but fought state regulations for a year before conceding that the clinic would never open.

“I probably should have given up earlier,” she said. “I’m not very good at that.”

A few weeks later, North Carolina banned abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Morgan has been part of that effort. For the past two years, she has traveled the country, closing and building clinics as director of growth and acquisitions for Whole Woman’s Health. On a clinic tour, Morgan pointed out equipment repurposed from former Whole Woman’s Health locations: black waiting-room chairs, blush surgical trays, a chair where patients get their blood drawn.

“If it could talk, it would tell you a lot of stories,” Morgan said of a research bench in San Antonio, Texas.

In the waiting room, where patients are greeted as they enter, hangs a royal purple sign with Whole Woman’s Health’s “MISSION STATEMENT,” which reads in part: “We honor women’s hopes, dreams and intentions in all the care that we provide.” Morgan ran his finger over the sign, noting where the purple paint had faded to reveal white underneath. The sign originally hung in a clinic in Texas.

“I love that it has some dents in it, because it’s just like us,” Morgan said. “It’s had its time, but it’s also had little scratches and scrapes, just like us.”

‘I have to plan’

On the first day the clinic was open, a woman flew in from Florida.

“She was so sweet and grateful,” said Dr. Meera Shah, the clinic’s medical director. “It made me angry that she had to do that at all, that she had to leave Florida.”

In her other job, as chief medical officer of a Planned Parenthood branch in New York state, Shah says she has treated scores of patients fleeing southern abortion laws, including a Florida woman who had an ectopic pregnancy, a nonviable pregnancy in which the embryo implants outside the uterus. If left untreated, ectopic pregnancies can cause women’s fallopian tubes to rupture, leading to hemorrhaging and even death.

In theory, abortion bans shouldn’t apply to ectopic pregnancies. But the woman was turned away from a Florida emergency room because, Shah said, a doctor found the state’s abortion laws “confusing.”

“You know, she could have ruptured,” Shah said. “The zip code you live in really dictates the type of health care you get. And it shouldn’t.”

By the weekend, the Petersburg clinic had helped three more people — from Florida, Georgia and Alabama — get abortions. Eventually, Morgan expects the clinic to see about 30 to 50 patients a week.

The upcoming 2024 elections could throw those plans into disarray, however, especially since abortion laws are still in flux in the South. Florida residents will vote on a ballot measure that could restore abortion access, but it will need 60% of the vote. In North Carolina, a Republican who called abortion “genocide” and “murder” is now running for governor. He has tried soften his position on abortion recently, but if he wins, North Carolina’s state government could ban abortion entirely.

The same week the Petersburg clinic opened, Donald Trump promised not to use a 19th-century anti-abortion law to ban abortion nationwide, while his running mate J.D. Vance said Trump would not sign a national abortion ban. But Project 2025, an influential blueprint for a conservative presidential administration, has a long list of anti-abortion proposals. Trump could renege on that promise, too.

“I feel much more engaged and hopeful than I have in a long time,” Hagstrom Miller said. “I’m also terrified that Trump will be re-elected and I have to plan for that eventuality. I have to plan for a nationwide abortion ban.”