For a woman in the fast-growing city of Southaven, Miss., for example, the trip to Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic, in Jackson, is three hours by car. Mississippi law requires women to undergo counseling, and a 24-hour waiting period, before an abortion may be performed.

Image A protester at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Memphis. Credit... Brandon Dill for The New York Times

But the same patient can be at Choices, one of two Memphis abortion clinics, in 20 minutes. Tennessee requires no special counseling and no waiting period.

“Should Tennessee be the abortion capital of the Bible Belt?” said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention, in a post on Twitter last month.

Abortion rights advocates reject such characterizations, noting that even with the 2000 ruling, legislators have enacted abortion regulations, including a 2012 law mandating that physicians who perform abortions have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

They also argue that the percentage of out-of-state patients fails to account for Tennessee’s geographic setting. It is surrounded by eight states whose residents often travel to places like Memphis for all kinds of big-city services.

The 2000 ruling was the result of a lawsuit brought against the governor at the time, Don Sundquist, by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood. The court ruled that “a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy is a vital part of the right to privacy” under the State Constitution, making any regulations of that right subject to a rigorous “strict scrutiny” standard. Both abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion forces agree that it created a level of protection for abortion higher than that afforded by the federal courts.

In the ruling, the state court also struck down three abortion-related provisions, including a required two-day waiting period; a mandate that only physicians may give informed consent to an abortion patient; and a requirement that all abortions after the first trimester be performed in a hospital.