KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Corinne Rovetti is worried about what will happen to the Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health if the Supreme Court overturns the constitutional right to abortion. The clinic, where she has worked for 33 years helping people across a four-state region, could close.
“We’re unsure if we’ll be able to maintain services at all,” said Rovetti, who is the co-director and a nurse practitioner at KCRH, which provides medication abortions and abortion procedures, as well as gynecological and family planning services. Each year, the center provides abortion services to 1,300 to 1,400 patients, including people from Kentucky, Georgia, and Virginia.
The independent clinic — which opened in 1975, two years after the Supreme Court’s historic Roe v. Wade decision — was one of the first to provide abortion services in Knoxville. KCRH has remained in the same location in the Fort Sanders neighborhood, nestled between the old homes and modern apartment buildings that house students who attend the nearby University of Tennessee. It became the only clinic that provides abortions in the area after Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood facility was intentionally set on fire on Dec. 31.
