JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) – Mississippi’s only abortion clinic has been full of activity in the chaotic days since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned abortion rights nationwide, a case that originated in this deep southern conservative state, with this bright pink medical facility closing its doors on Wednesday.
Doctors at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization have tried to treat as many patients as possible before Thursday, when, except for an unlikely intervention by the state’s conservative Supreme Court, Mississippi will enact a law to ban most abortions.
Amid the sweltering heat and humidity of the summer, clashes intensified Wednesday between anti-abortion protesters and volunteers escorting patients to the clinic, better known as the Pink House.
When Dr. Cheryl Hamlin, who has traveled from Boston for five years to have abortions, left the Pink House, an opponent of the abortion used a megabyte to call her. “Convert! Repent! ” cried Doug Lane.
Her words were drowned out by abortion rights advocate Beau Black, who repeatedly shouted at Lane, “Hypocrites and Pharisees! Hypocrites and Pharisees!”
Access to abortion has become increasingly limited to large areas of the United States as conservative states enacted restrictions or prohibitions that went into effect when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v.
The court, remodeled by three Conservative judges appointed by former President Donald Trump, handed down the sentence on June 24. But the Mississippi clinic has been flooded with patients since September, when Texas enacted the abortion ban early in pregnancy.
Cars with license plates from Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas have passed through the Fondren neighborhood of Jackson to take women and girls, some of whom looked like teenagers, to the Pink House. Drivers parked in the side streets near the clinic in the shade of pink and purple crepe myrtle, the car’s air conditioners exploding as they waited.
Diane Derzis, owner of the Mississippi clinic since 2010, went to Jackson to speak at the Pink House hours after the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v.
“It has been an honor and a privilege to be in Mississippi. I have come to love this state and the people there,” Derzis told the gathering with the suffocating heat.
The Supreme Court ruling was in a case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization: the clinic’s challenge to a 2018 Mississippi law to ban most abortions after 15 weeks. The Pink House had been having abortions for 16 weeks, but according to previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings, abortion was allowed to the point of fetal viability around 24 weeks.
Mississippi’s top public health official, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, was named in the lawsuit, but has not taken a public position on the case. The Republican state attorney general urged judges to use the case to overturn Roe v. Wade and give states more power to regulate or ban abortion.
Derzis told The Associated Press after the ruling that he did not regret filing the lawsuit that ultimately undermined nearly five decades of jurisprudence on abortion.
“We had no choice. And if it weren’t for that demand, it would have been another, ”said Derzis, who also owns abortion clinics in Georgia and Virginia and lives in Alabama.
The Mississippi clinic uses out-of-state doctors like Dr. Hamlin because no state doctor will work there.
As the Pink House prepared to close, Dr. Hamlin said she cared about women living in deep poverty in parts of the state with little access to health care.
“People say, ‘Oh, what am I supposed to do?'” He said. “And I say, ‘Vote.'”
Shannon Brewer, director of Pink House, agrees that low-income women will be the hardest hit by not being able to have an abortion in the state.
Brewer told the AP that anti-abortion protesters know her by name and call her, but she does not know them.
“They don’t tell me much anymore that, you know,‘ you’re going to come to work to kill babies, ’” Brewer said, “I’ve been here for twenty years. So it’s like when I get out of the car I don’t feel it because it’s like over and over and over again.
Some staff members were expected to be at the Casa Rosa on Thursday to do paperwork before it closes, but no paperwork.
With the closure of the Mississippi clinic, Derzis and Brewer will soon open an abortion clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico, an hour’s drive from El Paso, Texas, calling it Pink House West. Hamlin said he gets a license in New Mexico so he can work there.
Mississippi and New Mexico are two of the poorest states in the US, but they have very different positions on politics and access to abortion.
New Mexico, home to a Democratic-led legislature and governor, recently took an extra step to protect providers and patients from out-of-state prosecutions. You are likely to continue to see a steady influx of people seeking abortions from neighboring states with more restrictive abortion laws.
One of Texas ’largest abortion providers, Whole Woman’s Health, announced Wednesday that it also plans to reopen in New Mexico in a city near the state line, to offer abortions in the first and second trimesters. He began suspending operations in Texas after a ruling Friday by the state Supreme Court that forced abortions to end at its four clinics.
Standing in front of the Mississippi Clinic on June 24, Derzis was pragmatic about the future of the building she had painted bright pink a few years ago.
“This building will be sold and maybe someone will tear it down and make a parking lot here,” Derzis said. “And that will be sad, but she fulfilled her purpose and many women had abortions here.”
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AP writer Susan Montoya Bryan contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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