If the court’s conservative majority permits the law to stand, it could deal a major blow to abortion rights
A Mississippi clinic is at the center of the fight to end abortion in America. The state’s last abortion clinic, known as the ‘Pink House,’ is at the heart of a Supreme Court case. This could severely restrict abortion access for millions of largely poor women.
It is quite like a duel as on one part of the sidewalk, longtime anti-abortion demonstrator Coleman Boyd belts out Jesus’s love for the unborn.
“Your precious baby is going to be murdered in this place,” Boyd, a physician, preaches between songs. Nearby, supporters of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, turn up their own playlist of “Jagged Little Pill,” by Alanis Morissette, and other female empowerment anthems.
The struggle on the sidewalk will soon play out at the Supreme Court. Later this year, the court will hear arguments about a Mississippi law that if allowed to take effect would ban nearly all abortions after 15 weeks.
If the court’s conservative majority permits the law to stand, it could deal a major blow to abortion rights.
Such a ruling could give states greater latitude to limit how and when abortions are performed.
And if the court goes further and accedes to Mississippi’s request to overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision giving women a constitutional right to an abortion, some legislatures are poised to ban nearly all abortions. Twelve states, including Mississippi, have passed “trigger” laws with stringent abortion restrictions that could go into effect immediately, or soon after, if Roe were overturned.
“This is just a terrible situation,” said one of the clinic’s doctors, who travels from another state because local physicians will no longer perform abortions there. He said he does this work because he has seen the harm underground abortions have done to women.
Some states have enacted rules that require women to view ultrasounds, usually 24 hours before they can get abortions. In many places, women under 18 must notify guardians of their plans for abortion or seek consent. Lawmakers in a flood of Republican-led legislatures have passed
The clinic’s patients are largely “Black women, they are young, single,” the doctor said. “Maybe they can’t afford a child. Maybe they were abused, or can’t go home. When you deny them the right to have an abortion and they have to have one, where will they go now?”
In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that women have the right to an abortion before viability, the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb. Although there’s no universal agreement on when that happens, most experts estimate it to be around 24 weeks. But for much of the past 50 years, the antiabortion movement has chipped away at the ruling, and with their mostly Republican allies have passed laws that make it harder for women to access abortion providers.
Some states have enacted rules that require women to view ultrasounds, usually 24 hours before they can get abortions. In many places, women under 18 must notify guardians of their plans for abortion or seek consent. Lawmakers in a flood of Republican-led legislatures have passed “heartbeat bills,” which ban almost all abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually around six to eight weeks into pregnancy. Alabama attempted to ban abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. Those laws are contentious even among some opponents of abortion, and have been struck down by the courts.
The legislation being considered by the court in the Mississippi case — which would ban most abortions after 15 weeks — was blocked from going into effect in 2018 by a federal judge, who ruled the law “unequivocally” violates women’s constitutional rights.
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