Anti-abortion group seeks to overturn injunction after Tennessee clinic closure

“Anti-abortion protesters urged a Sixth Circuit panel on Tuesday to do away with an abortion provider’s claims against the group and vacate an order stopping the group from blocking the facility’s entrance, calling the matter moot since the clinic shut down last month.

The group held a weeklong protest at carafem, which operated until June in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The company behind the clinic sued the anti-abortion group for violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances and in September 2022 won a preliminary injunction.

Now that carafem, styled all-lower case, has closed down, the federal judge’s order is moot, argued the protesters’ attorneys of the Chicago-based Thomas More Society, a conservative Roman Catholic firm known for anti-abortion litigation.

“There is no longer a clinic,” attorney Steve Crampton said Tuesday, “and therefore there is no entrance.”…”