An appeal posted last month on the website of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi, said, “Anti-abortion extremists have vowed to shut down the Jackson Women’s Health Organization—the sole provider of abortions in Mississippi. For ten years with the Feminist Majority Foundation’s help this clinic has withstood every other challenge, from threats by anti-abortion protesters to punitive restrictions imposed by state lawmakers.” The Feminist Majority Foundation has helped organize defense of the clinic from rightist mobilizations as well as fund-raising to stave off legal attacks.

Susan Hill, owner of the clinic, told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, “No matter how restrictive the state has been, women still go to clinics and go through what the restrictions are. Women still obtain abortions in Mississippi.”

But access to abortion in the state has become increasingly difficult. With a population of 3 million, Mississippi has only one abortion provider, down from six in 1996.

The number of abortions recorded each year in Mississippi decreased from 8,184 in 1991 to 3,605 in 2002, the latest year for which the state Department of Health has figures. The abortion rate per thousand women of reproductive age has dropped from more than 13 to 6 in the same period. Some 60 percent of Mississippi women who are seeking to terminate a pregnancy now do so in another state, the Guttmacher Institute reports.

Pat Cartrette, executive director of the anti-abortion group Pro-Life Mississippi, told the Clarion-Ledger that anti-abortion protesters are present at the clinic whenever it is open.

In 2004 the state legislature passed six laws restricting women’s access to abortion, including one that bans abortions after 13 weeks’ pregnancy except in hospitals or ambulatory surgical centers. The Jackson Women’s Health Organization clinic secured an injunction allowing it to continue performing abortions up to 16 weeks.

Women seeking an abortion in Mississippi are also required to receive counseling, and then wait 24 hours before terminating a pregnancy. The counseling has to include information on adoption, and on benefits available for prenatal care. Providers are also mandated to tell patients that abortion may increase their risk of breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute’s findings, published March 2003, state “abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.”

The 24-hour waiting period is particularly onerous for rural residents, Betty Thompson, former director of the Jackson clinic, told the Associated Press. The requirement forces some women to take a day off from work and spend the night in Jackson. As for the state-mandated “counseling” of women at the clinics, Thompson said, “They don’t hear a word you say—they don’t ask questions. They tell us ‘we understand this already. We’re not stupid.’”

State law has long prohibited the use of state Medicaid funds to cover abortions, even in the case of rape. In 2000 the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit against the state because a 12-year-old girl had been denied Medicaid funds when she became pregnant after being raped.

Young women’s access to abortion is also limited by a law requiring women under the age of 18 to receive the consent of both parents in order to obtain an abortion. The only exception to the law occurs if the young woman has been impregnated by her father, in which case the consent of the mother is required.

Helen Barnes, one of the first practicing Black women obstetricians in Mississippi, told AP that “I do hate that we’re going backwards.” Barnes ran a clinic in the 1960s in the Mississippi Delta. “If you followed the rules, it (abortion) was acceptable. Now they’re trying to make it a crime.”

Larry Rodick, the director of the Alabama Planned Parenthood clinic, told AP that some Mississippi women drive across the state line to obtain an abortion, while others are having back-alley abortions. “Some of those women will probably end up getting sick and dying, though we’ll never know because they don’t put it on the death certificate.”

“When a state has no [abortion] providers, women who can afford to will go to another state,” said clinic owner Susan Hill. “It will leave a whole class of women to find another means to have an abortion.”  
 
 
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