Proposed Alabama Women's Center location on Sparkman.jpg

The Huntsville area's only abortion clinic, Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives, re-opened Oct. 13 in this building at 4831 Sparkman Drive. (Paul Gattis | pgattis@al.com)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - After a nearly four-month gap, North Alabama once again has a licensed abortion provider.

Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives, which closed its downtown Huntsville clinic in late June, re-opened Monday at 4831 Sparkman Drive after getting the OK from state Department of Public Health officials.

Dalton Johnson is the owner of Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives. (Eric Schultz | eschultz@al.com)

Clinic owner Dalton Johnson said he is "extremely relieved" to be back in business after having to vacate the former clinic on Madison Street, which could not be retrofitted to comply with the Alabama Women's Health and Safety Act of 2013. The act placed tougher building standards on abortion clinics, including overhead sprinkler systems and doors and hallways wide enough to accommodate ambulance gurneys.

"A lot of obstacles were coming in front of us, but we just kept moving forward," Johnson told AL.com Wednesday.

Alabama Women's Center received its abortion provider license Friday after state inspectors certified that the new location near the Sparkman Drive-Jordan Lane intersection is in compliance with state law, he said.

"It's going to be a great asset for women in North Alabama to have access to reproductive rights again," Pamela Willis Watters, director of Alabama Reproductive Rights Advocates, said Wednesday.

For the past few months, Huntsville-area women have had to drive to a clinic in Tuscaloosa for abortions.

The re-opening of the clinic on Sparkman Drive is certain to attract anti-abortion protesters, but Johnson said the commotion shouldn't be as bad as it was on Madison Street. You could almost touch the former clinic while standing on the sidewalk, forcing patients to drive - and sometimes walk - past a knot of sign-waving protestors.

"With this facility, we have more parking and won't have that bottleneck with the driveway," said Johnson. "Our patients won't have to walk through the protestors."

A group of anti-abortion activists led by Rev. James Henderson sued the City of Huntsville last month in an effort to prevent Alabama Women's Center from re-opening. The suit contends the Huntsville Board of Zoning Adjustment and Jim McGuffey, the city's manager of planning services, "erroneously determined" that the clinic could move into a residential district.

In 1998, the zoning board granted Huntsville Hospital a variance to open an outpatient medical clinic on the property now owned by Alabama Women's Center.

McGuffey ruled in May - and a majority of zoning board members later agreed - that the variance should also apply to an abortion clinic.

The lawsuit argues that the variance was exclusively for the Huntsville Hospital-managed medical clinic, which closed in 2013.