Staffers of a nonprofit abortion care provider, which is at the center of a major lawsuit challenging abortion restrictions, packed up their offices in North Austin on Thursday and prepared to relocate after they say that opponents bought out the lease for their building.

Whole Woman’s Health of Austin closed its offices to patients earlier this week and plans to reopen Feb. 26 at its new location at the 4100 block of Duval Road, near the Domain.

The nonprofit works with Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, which was a plaintiff in a U.S. Supreme Court case that in 2016 successfully challenged Texas regulations that would have closed more than half of the state’s abortion clinics. The group is currently involved in three lawsuits seeking to overturn abortion regulations in Texas.

“The anti-abortion movement’s attacks on us continue — from the Legislature to the courts and even behind the scenes with our realtors and vendors, but we persist, and we prevail,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and president of Whole Woman’s Health Alliance.

The North Austin building space, at the 8400 block of North Interstate 35, has been leased by Lion Venture Partners. The company’s managing partner Andy Schoonover also co-founded the nonprofit Carrying To Term, which advocates for pregnant women who have received a terminal prenatal diagnosis to consider giving birth nonetheless.



Schoonover told the American-Statesman in an email that Carrying To Term has nothing to do with the building space and “won’t be working in it.”

Carrying to Term is “not paying for the space,” he wrote. “The CTT organization has zero affiliation with what I’m personally doing there.” He added that Carrying to Term works “with a host of pro-life and pro-choice providers including hospital systems nationally and internationally.”

However, Austin LifeCare, a faith-based center that counsels pregnant women, will be moving into that space after a full renovation of the facility, Schoonover said. He serves as the organization’s executive director and said the clinic will include services such as ultrasounds and cancer screenings. He expects the clinic to open this spring.

Whole Woman’s Health had been a tenant in the North Austin location since 2003, and Hagstrom Miller said this was the second time an organization had tried to buy out her nonprofit's lease. She said Whole Woman’s Health raised money to stay in the space the first time, but now it would have cost $200,000 more than what the group was already paying to extend its lease for four years.

The organization decided to look for another space instead and searched for eight months to find a new one. Many properties turned the group down because it offers abortion services, Hagstrom Miller said.

“It was shocking how many landlords were afraid to lease to us,” she said.

