Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic Faces Wave of Women Rushing To Break The Laws And Biology Deadlines | US News

On a street corner in Jackson, Mississippi, USA, the calculation of abortion is reproduced very closely and roughly.

The entrance to the parking lot at the Jackson Women’s Health Foundation is always a stressful place. But today it is on another level.

When cars are packed with patients arriving for appointments, anti-abortion activists offer direct and unsolicited advice.

“Don’t let them kill your child…”

“Do you love that little baby and have pity on it?”

“The bible says that a body without a soul is dead…”

Pink House, as it became known, is the only abortion clinic still operating in the state of Mississippi.

Within days, once the governor here signs the abortion ban, it will be forced to close.

In surrounding states – Louisiana, Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Kentucky – all clinics have closed.

And that’s why the parking lot at The Pink House is so busy. This is a consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision.

Choices are now being made and deeply individualized procedures are being implemented urgently, not only to meet the deadlines of biology but also of the law.

Support volunteers dressed in multicolored vests were on hand to guide cars and patients through the protesters’ gloves.

I watch as anti-abortion protester Doug Lane shouts his interpretation of the Bible through the car window.

The protesters are still here, despite their victory in the Supreme Court, offering God and the choice between redemption or hell.

I asked Doug if this was really appropriate behavior for women with such personal choices.

“You think it’s threatening them? What we hope it’s doing is gnawing at their conscience,” he said.

“We believe that the child in the womb is a human being created in the image of God and that the destruction of that life is murder.”

Another protester, Brian, was as direct.

“They are killing children inside this pink house here. People need to be prosecuted, justice needs to be respected now,” he said.

“Hell will be hot and forever.

“We love these women and we want them to repent and we want these children to be saved.

“So we raised our voices like a trumpet and preached the gospel.”

The Supreme Court’s legal ruling, which has now profoundly changed America’s social fabric, all starts here at The Pink House.

The clinic’s battle with the state of Mississippi has cut through the US court system. This year, it finally reached the highest court in the land and the desks of its nine judges.

The Supreme Court, with a conservative extreme majority appointed by Trump, sided with the state on Friday and in doing so, reversed women’s right to choose; a right enshrined in the US Constitution for 50 years.

“What happened is unconstitutional,” Dale Gibson, who was escorting the clinic, told me.

“How can they take away the states’ right to say everyone can carry a gun but then turn federal rights away from women and move it back to the states? Doesn’t make any sense. chief.”

He looked angry but also extremely sad.

He paused, then added: “I hope people enjoy the constitution we’ve had for 250 years because we don’t have it anymore. I’m done.”

Outside the clinic door, I met Pattie D’Arcy, who had come from New Orleans to express her support for women’s choice.

“Louisiana is closed,” she said.

“Women are dying. I’m not just being dramatized. It’s really scary.”

The decision in the Supreme Court in Washington DC is raising profound questions for the country about its unity, stability and democracy, but here’s where the impact will be so big, the questions more basic. It’s about choices over health and lives being taken.

Out of the melee, I met Natalie Collier. She is the founder and president of The Lighthouse: Black Girl Projects, a charity that supports some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in this city.

“This is a conversation about control,” she told me.

“Historically poor black women, living in communities that don’t serve them well, will suffer the consequences,” she said.

I ask what happens now.

“It’s about finding ways to destroy the system to take care of people in the community,” she said.

“It’s about employment… I’m trying to find a better way to say take care of people illegally if that’s the right thing to do.”

And that’s the point of it. The end result will be to reverse underground abortion.