The mayor of Rossville said he wanted his city to avoid “drama” by passing ordinances banning abortion clinics and pill mills.
According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, councilmen of the city on the Georgia-Tennessee border passed Monday night ordinances forbidding the establishment of abortion clinics and pill mills.
Neither Rossville nor Walker County, where the city is located, have any abortion clinics within their boundaries. But Mayor Tommy Harris said keeping such institutions out was necessary to keep Rossville a “peaceful city.”
“We don’t want to have any protesters,” Harris said, according to the newspaper.
The abortion clinic ordinance would still allow licensed physicians to perform abortions within a hospital if they would save the woman’s life, and if the physician could certify that the baby would not survive out of the mother’s womb.
As for pills mills, such operations are illegal under state and federal law, but Harris, according to the newspaper, said the ordinance banning them would give local law enforcement another tool to ensure that they could shut down such establishments if they popped up.
“We don’t want [a pill mill] for the drama,” he said. “Law enforcement (here) can’t handle it.”
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