A proposed clinic in Beverly Hills was blocked from opening, highlighting California’s barriers to abortion rights.
A Beverly Hills City Council meeting at Beverly Hills City Hall on April 16, 2024. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMattersA proposed clinic that would have performed later abortions was blocked from opening in Beverly Hills. As Gov. Newsom focuses on access for Arizona women, officials are overlooking barriers for providers in California.BEVERLY HILLS — The billboards popped up in January, looming above busy intersections near the city limits of Beverly Hills, where such advertising is banned.
On a recent afternoon, Grossman sat in her living room with other members of a group they founded last fall to demand attention and accountability for DuPont Clinic — furious that Beverly Hills had failed to stand up to anti-abortion protestors and defend a provider offering a procedure not commonly available elsewhere, and frustrated that liberals remain oblivious to the threats to abortion access in their own backyard.
Jon Dunn, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties, said the organized resistance is more intense than he’s ever seen in his 30-year career. Aggressive demonstrations now require full-time security staff at every clinic, he said, while local officials who might have once backed down under threat of a lawsuit are standing firm.
“We saw this pattern developing of municipalities using their power to prevent reproductive health centers from opening,” Dunn said. “We felt it was time to draw a line in the sand.”, calling the emergency moratorium “a strategic and necessary measure in the planning process as Fontana progresses with the highly anticipated redevelopment of the important downtown and commercial corridor.
DuPont Clinic never opened in Beverly Hills and never served a single patient there. The matter is now headed to court after DuPont last year separately sued Beverly Hills and Douglas Emmett, Inc., the landlord that rescinded its lease, alleging they “colluded and conspired with the protestors to try to drive DuPont out of the City.
During the meeting, Beverly Hills City Manager Nancy Hunt-Coffey emailed members of the council with more information about DuPont Clinic, according to documents obtained by Beverly Hills for Choice through a public records request. It included a warning: “Late-term abortion clinics can be the focus of protests, rallies and unfortunately other more violent actions on occasion.”“Well, it’s a private business renting space in a private building,” Hunt-Coffey replied.
Barker would only speak with CalMatters if a reporter signed a contract agreeing to conditions that included allowing her to “review and make edits” to this story prior to publication. CalMatters refused because that would violate our editorial policies. Jessica Corpuz, an attorney representing DuPont Clinic, told CalMatters the abortion provider was “always, always going to operate within California law,” which only allows abortions after fetal viability when the life or health of the mother is threatened. She said Beverly Hills officials appeared to take some of the complaints of “anti-abortion extremists” to heart and “interject themselves in the process” in a way that they would not have for other medical practices.
DuPont, in its lawsuit, said this joint email was clearly intended by Douglas Emmett “to notify the City that it had done what the City instructed it to do.” Beverly Hills treated the clinic as the problem, said Corpuz, the DuPont attorney, instead of focusing on how to keep everyone safe. Gay Abrams, a member of Beverly Hills for Choice, said she found the city’s handling of the situation hypocritical, given its public stance in support of reproductive freedom, and she worried that it would empower abortion opponents to use the same strategy elsewhere. Though she understood the heightened sensitivities around a clinic that performs abortions into the third trimester, she said it should not have mattered because of the protections guaranteed by Proposition 1.
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