The Women’s Health Center in Charleston, West Virginia is an unassuming, single-story beige brick building in a shabby neighborhood, just steps from the train tracks and a crisis pregnancy center, a shuttered vape shop, and a row of small homes surrounded by chainlink fences. I visited the center, the last abortion clinic in the state, on a Wednesday in June, one of the two days each week that the clinic performs abortions.
tactics when I approached him. I had barely introduced myself as a reporter, putting out my hand to shake his, when he pulled out his smartphone and pointed it at my face. was quiet, the only noise was coming from the television mounted on the wall. As people walked into the waiting room through the back entrance—no one uses the main entrance anymore, not since the protesters arrived—some, like a teenager and her mother,The people who make it to the clinic are the lucky ones.
for people to legally terminate a pregnancy, not just in West Virginia but in states around the country.the state’s Democrats, makes it just difficult enough to get an abortion or run a clinic. The owner of a for-profit clinic shuts its doors, deciding it’s too difficult to run a clinic in a hostile state. Rightwing Christian protesters, riding a wave of momentum, decide to again start picketing.