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Lynchburg council holds lengthy, heated hearing on ordinance to restrict where abortion clinics may locate
Summary
A large and at times contentious public hearing on a proposed zoning amendment to define and place limits on abortion clinics drew hundreds of in-person speakers and over 350 voicemail comments; council adopted a special procedure to summarize voice mails and then debated the ordinance and a contested proposed amendment to remove a family-planning exemption before initiating a vote.
Lynchburg City Council spent the bulk of its Feb. 12 meeting hearing from several hundred citizens and debating a proposed zoning ordinance that would define "abortion clinics," require a conditional-use permit for such facilities in certain commercial and institutional districts and establish a 1,000-foot buffer from residential districts, schools, churches, parks and other sensitive uses.
Tom Martin, the city's director of community development, said staff drafted the ordinance to be legally defensible and enforceable and that the measure would not categorically ban clinics but would regulate their location and require council review of conditional-use permit requests.
Because staff received an extraordinary volume of voicemail comments, council adopted a special rule for agenda item 1.2: rather than play hours of recordings during…
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