Inside America's abortion clinics, where doctors have to carry guns in their scrubs

In clinics near states with bans, staff bear firearms and take constant security precautions to try to ensure they and their patients remain safe. Bel Trew reports from Bristol, Virginia

Dr Aaron Campbell holds his gun as he accelerates towards the abortion clinic where he works. Anti-abortion protesters who camp outside recognise him, although he uses different rental cars to confuse them. As his tyres squeal around the corner, they surge towards the vehicle. “The killer has arrived!” one shouts.

The staff at Bristol Women’s Health Clinic, who are always notified of his arrival in advance, rush him in safely through a back door. “When I pull up to the clinic, I typically will hold my firearm, finger off the trigger, but ready to go if I feel like I have a threat,” Dr Campbell tells The Independent between procedures, his pistol still visibly tucked into his scrubs.

This is surgery day at an abortion clinic in Bristol, Virginia, which has been on one of the country’s simmering fault lines ever since the 2022 Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade and ended nationwide access to abortion. Bristol straddles two states: Virginia, which allows the procedure, and Tennessee, which has banned it, with very limited exceptions.

That makes this innocuous red brick building, located less than half a mile from the Tennessee state line, the closest surgical abortion provider for swathes of the southeast, where many abortion bans are in place. "I never thought we would be living in this reality," adds Dr Campbell, who had to give up the health clinic his father founded in Knoxville, Tennessee after Dobbs made his work impossible.

The car parks of abortion clinics across the US have become frontlines, with anti-abortion activists exercising their legal right to protest by trying to coax, dissuade and harass those trying to get an abortion. Sometimes that can tip over into violence.