Organizations in Mississippi that support a woman’s right to choose abortion have joined together in the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Project. Their aim, Colon said, is to organize to keep the Jackson Women’s Health Organization open and defeat the forces trying to shut it down.

Operation Save America, formerly Operation Rescue, which is campaigning to re-criminalize abortion, has announced a “siege” of the clinic, calling on its supporters to come here July 15---22.

Women’s rights supporters are countermobilizing here at the same time, coming from Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and other states, Colon said.

Kim Gandy, national president of NOW, is scheduled to address a kickoff rally at Smith Park here July 15. Pro-choice groups will march on the state capitol July 22. In the intervening week, women’s rights supporters are mobilizing daily to defend the clinic and related activities.

On its web site, Operation Save America extols people to join them “at the ‘last abortion mill’ in the state.” In a video clip filmed outside the Jackson clinic, the group’s director, Rev. Flip Benham, exclaims, “We are going to storm these gates of Hell, and we are going to pray that God pushes abortion in the state of Mississippi right into a grave. No more little children killed by abortion in Mississippi, and when that happens…the laws of our land will reflect the victory that was won in the streets.”

Women’s rights supporters here say they are organizing a series of public demonstrations to reflect the majority sentiment for a woman’s right to choose abortion, which was decriminalized in the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling. They are also doing training for clinic defense in case it is needed.

“Women patients have told me, ‘There is nobody out there for me,’” said Colon. “We have to do something. We are not providing traditional clinic defense now, but that could change at any time.”

Susan Hill, the owner of the clinic, has requested that there be no pro-choice assembly at the clinic site.

Betty Thompson, a former director of the clinic, attended a defense training session July 8. She said patients drive into an underground parking lot and proceed directly to the clinic from there, bypassing anti-abortion protesters who often congregate in front of the facility.

The Operation Save America attempt to close the clinic comes on the heels of an effort to ban abortions in Mississippi. Both Democratic and Republican politicians expressed support for a ban, but the bill died when the state legislature was unable to agree on the exact provisions.

The rightist forces here have attracted some African-Americans to their cause. “The new president of Pro-Life Mississippi, a Black woman, has joined some Black ministers in calling abortion genocide against Blacks,” said Colon, who is African-American herself. Supporters of Operation Save America, she said, are not concerned about the disproportionate number of Blacks on death row in Mississippi, or the higher number of African-American and other mostly working-class women who would die from botched abortions if the medical procedure becomes completely inaccessible in the state.

Seventy-two percent of women who get abortions in Mississippi are Black.

“We denounce the biased message and presence of Operation Oppress America,” Colon told the Militant, using a term she coined for the rightist group attempting to shut down the clinic here. “We will not allow them to intimidate us, our clinic, or most importantly, the courageous patients. I hope pro-choice activists will join us this summer for Reproductive Freedom Summer in Jackson, Mississippi!”  
 
 
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