In a controversial move, the City Council in Raleigh, North Carolina blocked a pregnancy resource focus from moving onto the land it owns beside an abortion clinic on Tuesday.
The abortion clinic in Raleigh, A Favored Women’s Healthiness Center, has actually been fighting the pro-life pregnancy center’s request to have actually its land rezoned for the past couple of months. A Hand of Chance pregnancy focus bought the land last year and hoped to relocate in there to much better serve pregnant and parenting moms and their families.
However, The News Observer reports the city council rejected the pregnancy center’s rezoning request in a unanimous vote on Tuesday
Here’s much more from the report:
Under the city’s zoning code, just residential uses are allowed on the property, which Hand of Chance bought last year. So the group asked the City Council to rezone the property to enable for commercial use. Hand of Chance wanted to lure much more clients and conserve cash by relocating its office from a space it leases much less compared to a mile down the street.
The issue divided location residents and council members for weeks. Some believed the ideological differences would certainly improve tensions in the community, while others downplayed those pertains to and argued that Hand of Chance has actually a ideal to operate there.
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The city’s Preparing Commission – residents appointed by the City Council to judge whether such land-usage requests are in compliance along with city codes – unanimously recommended approval of Hand of Hope’s request.
But the City Council on Tuesday cited those very same city codes once refusing Hand of Hope’s request, and didn’t mention abortion or neighborhood tensions at all.
According to news reports, the city council members did not delivering up abortion at all of throughout their discussion; their discussion focused city Preparing efforts.
Brandi Kraus, a regional resident, spoke up at the meeting on behalf of the pregnancy center, WRAL reports.
“If an abortion clinic is located there, why not provide women one more choice to conserve their pregnancy, to conserve their baby,” Kraus said.
Tonya Baker Nelson, director of the pro-life pregnancy center, said she was surpriseded by the vote.
“From all of our research, it looked love our request match ideal in to the UDO (Raleigh’s improvement guidelines) and we were adhering to all of the rules laid out for us, step-by-step,” Nelson said.
Leaders of the abortion clinic have actually been fighting the pregnancy center’s rezoning request from the start. They argued that the pro-life pregnancy focus and its supporters would certainly harass women seeking abortions.
Nelson refuted the claims, saying her organization does not harass women or encourage or enable protesters on its property.
“We don’t have to protest to attract ourselves to the community,” Nelson told the council previously.
“We will certainly be located ideal next to the abortion clinic, considerably love McDonald’s is across the street from Burger King,” Nelson continued previously. “It makes excellent company sense to go specifically where the individuals are that we’re attempting to reach.”
Abortion supporters’ opposition to the relocate is interesting, interested in that they call themselves “pro-choice.” Abortion clinics usually supply women merely one “choice” — abortion, while pregnancy resource centers supply women substitutions to abortion, including parenting and adoption resources. If pro-abortion individuals support giving women a “choice” to abort, provide birth or make an adoption plan, they must welcome a pregnancy focus that offers women substitutions to abortion.
According to its website, Hands of Chance operates two pregnancy centers in North Carolina where it offers free and confidential pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STD testing, selections counseling and more. The pro-life focus says it “exists solely to actually supply women and men that are experiencing an unexpected pregnancy a genuine choice in their decision making process.”
