NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee city that tried to outlaw surgical abortions has agreed to pay $225,000 in legal fees to attorneys representing an abortion clinic.
According to an order entered in federal court in Nashville on Thursday, the city of Mt. Juliet also agrees to let the carafem abortion clinic operate anywhere in the city that is zoned for professional medical services or physicians' offices.
Carafem sued Mt. Juliet in December after commissioners passed a zoning ordinance that had the effect of banning surgical abortions anywhere within city limits.
“City commissioners in Mt. Juliet have now wasted taxpayers’ money and months in court, in a futile attempt to ban access to abortion,” Andrew Beck, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project said in a press release. “Let this be a warning to politicians — especially those in the statehouse in Nashville, whose ban on abortion from the earliest weeks of pregnancy was blocked in court just last month — if you attack your constituents’ constitutional right to abortion, we will see you in court. And we will win.”
Thursday's settlement came after a judge in May ordered the city to stop enforcing the ordinance.
