Women’s Health Clinic in Jackson, Miss., Located in the heart of Dobbs sues Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.
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Women’s Health Clinic in Jackson, Miss., Located in the heart of Dobbs sues Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Sarah McCammon / NPR
Outside the Jackson Women’s Health Foundation clinic In Mississippi on a typical morning, there was a steady stream of protesters trying to persuade women not to come inside.
“We’re here to help you,” one young woman called her patients one summer morning this year. “Please don’t do this.”
That morning, she and another protester shouted through the black tarp wrapped around the clinic’s gate to protect patients as they entered. The protesters declined to give their names, saying they did not trust reporters to represent them fairly.
They read aloud a passage from the Bible book of Psalms.
“It said, ‘Because you formed my internals, you connected me together in my mother’s womb,'” they said over the canvas. “We are here to help you and support you. you in every way possible.”
This clinic, the last remaining abortion facility in the state, is in the center of the Dobbs sues Jackson Women’s Health Organization, before the Supreme Court on December 1. The clinic is challenging a state law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy – before a fetus is viable. If the court upholds the law, it will be reversed its own precedent, which states that states cannot interfere with abortion rights at that stage.
Buildings on a busy street in the capital Mississippi are painted in bubble pink.
“What another day at Pink House, sadly,” says Cory Drake, a hospital escort who spends three or four days a week here, helping patients from their cars into the waiting room.
“Mornings are a bit busy. Afternoons slow down a bit,” Drake said. “We can have between five and 120 protesters outside, depending on the day of the week.”
Shannon Brewer, director at the Jackson Women’s Health Foundation.
Sarah McCammon / NPR
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Shannon Brewer, director at the Jackson Women’s Health Foundation.
Sarah McCammon / NPR
Shannon Brewer, director at Jackson Women’s Health, said the tensions unfolding on her clinic’s doorstep mirror the larger battle raging across the US and in the Supreme Court.
“This is how they abort the pregnancy until it goes away,” says Brewer. “That’s 15 weeks, and then 14 weeks, and then it’s 10. This is how they do it.”
One of the clinic’s abortion providers, Dr. Cheryl Hamlin, said most of her patients are still in their first trimester and doctors here won’t perform abortions during pregnancy. beyond 16 weeks of age.
“[The ban is] Hamlin said was clearly directed at us because our limit is 16 weeks.
Hamlin said other restrictions already in place are delaying the process for some patients. A few hours’ flight from Jackson, ma’am. – site of only clinic in the state. Mississippi law requires patients to wait 24 hours to have an abortion after their first date, extra time.
But for those who oppose abortion rights, the prospect of the Supreme Court allowing further restrictions is the culmination of decades of activism.
“We always know that in the end Roe will be reversed and we want to be ready for that day,” said Sarah Zarr, area manager for Students for Life in America. She is helping organize a national knock-knock campaign in different regions. Cities include Jackson, which is designed to promote the local crisis recovery counseling center for patients against abortion.
Zarr said anti-abortion groups like hers are also working in state legislatures to introduce more restrictive abortion laws, including regulations on abortion. medical abortion, one increasingly popular choice for many patients and as an alternative to surgical abortion. Zarr said she hopes such restrictions will bypass increasingly conservative Supreme Court scrutiny.
Yes, the court has Texas law allows effectively bans most abortions in that state – possibly signaling a willingness to allow more states like Mississippi to restrict abortions even further.
