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Dear friend,
My name is Rebecca Terrell, and I'm the executive director of CHOICES Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, the first and only nonprofit in the nation to offer abortion and birth services under the same roof. We serve 4,000 patients annually that come to us for everything from contraception to wellness care to pregnancy options counseling and everything in between. Whatever services our patients want around their pregnancy and reproductive health experience, we're there to help.
But we've faced our fair share of challenges. In 2015, Tennessee enacted a mandatory 48-hour waiting period for people seeking abortion care. That meant that a patient was required to come to our facility to receive state-mandated biased counseling at least 48 hours prior to their scheduled appointment. We see patients from all across the greater Memphis area and several southeastern states, and for many, this law meant taking more time off work, paying for gas to drive to our facility multiple times, finding childcare for several days—this waiting period was a clear and devastating obstacle to the people who needed care most and we knew we had to act.
We partnered with the Center for Reproductive Rights to challenge this outrageous law, and last month we got the decision we'd been hoping for: a federal district court struck down the law.
We are honored to work with the brilliant legal minds at the Center for Reproductive Rights. Challenging laws like this one can be a long and expensive road that many organizations like ours couldn't travel on our own. The support of people like you allows the Center to take on cases like ours when it matters most.
Right now, when you make a gift to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a group of donors will match your contribution dollar for dollar—up to $125,000.
I hope you'll take advantage of this opportunity to have your gift go twice as far in supporting cases like ours—our patients are depending on it.
We are so glad that we can now schedule our patients for care in a manner that centers around their needs, not the political vagaries of our state government—but we know this isn't the end of the road. You can bet that with the help of the Center we will challenge as many laws as we have to and fight for as long as it takes to secure reproductive rights in Tennessee.
Won't you make a gift today to support the work the Center for Reproductive Rights is doing to protect abortion access not just in Tennessee, but anywhere it is threatened? You have the opportunity to make double the impact on this critical work—please don't miss it.
On behalf of everyone here at CHOICES Memphis, THANK YOU for your incredible support of the Center for Reproductive Rights. I'm forever grateful for their partnership, expertise, and willingness to stand with us and fight for our patients.
As Nancy Northup likes to say, ONWARD!
Sincerely,
Rebecca Terrell
Executive Director
CHOICES Memphis Center for Reproductive Health
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