Mississippi’s only abortion clinic promises to help ‘every woman’ before closing, #Mississippi #abortion #clinic #vow #woman #hatches Welcome to OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
Diane Derzis says she and her staff are angry and upset. They are also very determined.
After the Supreme Court overthrew Roe v. Wadeand the state’s top legal officer who “certified” a 2007 emergency law banning all abortions gave them 10 days to see as many patients as possible before the only clinic of its kind in all of Mississippi opened its doors closed, perhaps forever.
This means that Derzis and her staff will work until July 6 – with the exception of the July 4 holiday when they could not find a doctor – with little rest to help women from Mississippi and the region get an abortion until it becomes illegal.
“We are on track. We see patients and we will see patients until July 6, ”says Derzis (68). The Independent. “After that stage, we will not have abortions in the state of Mississippi.”
Since 2010, Derzis has owned the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, better known as the Pink House, which for many years has been the only abortion clinic in a state with one of the highest rates of poverty, maternal mortality and teenage pregnancy.
The clinic itself, with its famous pink-painted walls and located in the state capital, Jackson, has been operating since 1996 and helps numerous women from the state and the greater region, and recently treated patients from states such as Texas and Louisiana, where abortion be helped, assisted. ban has already been implemented.
As the only supplier in what some have “ended an abortion desert”, the Pink House has taken on more and more significance, both for its opponents who will delight in its closure, and its defenders, who are trying even at this late stage still find a way to save it.
Indeed, it was a lawsuit to try to stop a 15-week ban on abortions that ended in the Supreme Court, where the Conservative judges – three of them appointed by Donald Trump – scrapped gnawthe culmination of a strategy that had been in the making for decades by conservative Christians.
This week, several organizations acting on behalf of the clinic filed another lawsuit in a district court, arguing that Mississippi’s own constitution protects a woman’s right to abortion, and that it was not affected by last week’s 5-4 decide what has been deleted. gnaw after 49 years.
The lawsuit alleges that in a 1998 case known as Pro-Choice Mississippi Teen Fordicethe Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that “[n]or right is kept more holy. . . as the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person… .no aspect of life is more personal and private than that which has to do with your own reproductive system ”.
The battle to save Mississippi’s last abortion clinic
Rob McDuff, a lawyer at the Mississippi Center for Justice, one of the groups that has long helped the clinic, says Mississippi’s constitutional provision on abortion was not examined in 2007, when the trigger law was passed, “because the federal constitution protected the right to abortion in the federal courts ”.
“Until now, we have not needed to go to the state court and appeal the Mississippi constitution,” he says. “On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court violated federal constitutional protection, and on Monday we filed our lawsuit under the state constitution.”
Asked about the chances of the lawsuit succeeding, he said: “If the Mississippi state courts stick to what they said in 1998, we will be successful.”
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch on Monday formally certified the trigger law, which set the 10-day countdown in motion.
“As we have said in this case, Roe v. Wade “presented a false choice between a woman’s future and her child’s life,” she said in a statement.
On Thursday, Fitch spokesman Debeee Hanckock said: “We are not commenting on pending litigation. But the Supreme Court was clear on Friday and we will fight to retain that victory for Mississippi. “
Derzis says she gives her clinic’s lawsuit a “one percent” chance of success and considers it a long shot.
“I think it is quite [sums up how we feel] – sad, angry and when it happens, people are even more motivated to keep doing what they know is right, ”says Derzis.
“It’s all those emotions. You do not work in an abortion clinic for the money. There is not enough money to do this. You have to have the passion to help people. And that’s what they did. ”
Derenda Hancock, co-organizer of the ‘Pink House Defenders’ stands outside the Jackson Women’s Health Organization
(Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
Derzis, who lives in Alabama, says she bought the clinic in 2010, following the death of her friend, celebrated abortion rights activist Susan Hill, a one-time president of the National Women’s Health Organization, who died that year.
The clinic was established in 1996, at a time when abortion facilities across the country were frequently attacked.
Between 1993 and 2009, four abortion providers were targeted and killed, including David Gunn, who was shot dead outside his clinic in Pensacola, Florida.
The attacks forced places like the Pink House to adopt stricter security. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, another state with a lone abortion provider now closed, there was a time when at least one of the doctors who flew in from outside the state to perform the abortions – no doctor in South Dakota would not do so – wore body armor.
After a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was attacked in 2015 that resulted in the deaths of three people, an article in vox noted that a total of 10 people were killed by anti-abortion extremists. It added that since 1977 there have also been 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings and 186 arsons.
Over the years, the Pink House has received many threats. This week, as the countdown began, staff and patients were reportedly feeling anxious.
For much of the past year, and especially after Texas introduced an almost total ban on abortion, she has tried to help women in Mississippi – as well as in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia where she also owns clinics. and planned for the Post-gnaw battlefield.
Shannon Brewer is an ardent defender of women’s right to vote as director of Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization
(AP)
So while the team in Jackson is working this past week to help as many women as possible – she estimates they can assist a few hundred women – she is also preparing to open a new clinic in Los Cruces, New Mexico, about 1 000 miles to open. away.
Many of the staff, including its medical director, Shannon Brewer, are planning to make the move to New Mexico, Derzis says.
She says there is a sadness that staff will have to leave their homes in Jackson, and “now the women in Mississippi are going to have a hard time getting an abortion.”
She says across a large part of the country, “hundreds of thousands of women” are going to cover the last distances or otherwise rely on abortion medications sent by mail. Many states have said they will also try to prosecute people who send such medications by mail.
“This is what the United States of America now looks like for the women living in those states,” she says. “That’s where we came from.”
Derzis says she is trying to appoint additional doctors for the last week that the clinic will remain open, and that “two or three doctors” will work at a time.
She says she believes the clinic will be able to help several hundred women before the Pink House finally closes its doors.
She adds: “So many who want to come, we will be able to see them.”
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