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March 2005

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Mississippi Abortion Battle

By Eleanor j. Bader
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A week after Haley Barbour took office as governor of Mississippi in January 2004, he promised to “end the tragedy of abortion” by “changing hearts and minds one at a time.” Among his first actions was to declare the period from January 18 to 25 “A Week of Prayer Regarding the Sanctity of Human Life.” He further allowed Pro-Life Mississippi to place 2,000 white crosses on the statehouse lawn “in memory of unborn children who die each day.”  

In the 14 months since then, this former RNC chair and White House staffer has wasted no time in cozying up to an array of right- wing extremists, even placing a Confederate flag on his website. Medicaid funding and services to the elderly and disabled have been slashed; Jon Stewart’s America: The Book has been banned in two counties; and a host of anti-abortion measures have sailed through the legislature, making Mississippi one of the most virulently anti-choice states in the country. Only one clinic—the Jackson Women’s Health Organization (JWHO)—exists, down from seven a decade- and-a-half ago. 

Thanks to Barbour, Mississippi has the most sweeping  “conscience clause” in the U.S., allowing any health provider—doctor, nurse, CNA, home health aid, pharmacist, social worker, technician, counselor, or receptionist—to refuse to provide abortion-related services, including referrals, to those in need. A 24-hour waiting period between scheduling an abortion and having surgery is in place, and women are subjected to mandatory in-person “counseling” that, among other things, warns them of a link between abortion and breast cancer. Forget that the National Cancer Institute has repeatedly refuted this claim; doctors in the Magnolia State are required by law to tell women of a purported connection. Women are also required to view color photos of fetuses in biweekly gestational increments. On top of this, Mississippi requires minors to get the consent of both parents, or obtain a court order, before an abortion can be performed unless the pregnancy is the result of documented incest. Lastly, in a state where one in five people lives below the poverty line, Medicaid does not pay for elective abortions. 

Small wonder that Mississippi has one of the lowest termination rates in the nation. Indeed, state statisticians report that abortions fell from a high of 8,814 in 1991 to 3,605 in 2002, the last year for which numbers are available. 

“The essence of the fight over abortion is what is happening in Mississippi. It is the heart of the reddest of the red states and it is where the battle lines have been drawn,” says Susan Hill, owner of six clinics, including the JWHO that comprise the National Wo- men’s Health Organization. “It’s a simple battle in Mississippi. There are two sides, with no in- betweens.” 

Hill opened the JWHO in January 1995. “I was at a meeting in DC in 1993 or 1994 and Ellie Smeal said to me, ‘You have to do a clinic in Mississippi or pretty soon there won’t be any providers there.’ I didn’t realize then how prescient Ellie was. One day my friend [longtime reproductive rights activist] Ann Rose and I went to Jackson, looked around, met with people, and it all fell into place. The day we conducted interviews to hire staff was the day the Boston shootings occurred, December 30, 1994. We were the first clinic to open after the murders.

“We told ourselves that we couldn’t do a clinic in Mississippi halfway,” Hill continues. “We had to do the best clinic possible. We needed the nicest building and the best doctors and staff. It had to be something the community would be proud of.” 

The plan to create a state-of- the-art facility worked and Hill reports that both local residents and individual feminists have been “wonderfully supportive,” going so far as to alert staff whenever they see anything suspicious. Still, community support has done little to silence the anti-abortionists who have been an everyday presence at the health center since it opened.  

The antis got a boost in August 2004 when the New Woman Health Center, Mississippi’s second abortion facility, closed. Since then, protesters, including Roy McMillan (a friend of assassin Paul Hill and an outspoken proponent of violence against abortion providers), have escalated their harassment of patients and staff.  “They stand in front of the clinic door and pray and shout. Roy McMillan hollers obscenities: ‘You’re killing all the Black babies. You’re niggers killing niggers.’ It upsets everyone. About eight of them stand in the parking lot and get in the way of the women coming in,” says Betty Thompson, JWHO’s former director, now a consultant to the clinic. 

Despite the antis’ menacing presence, JWHO staff have numerous other problems to contend with. According to Thompson, at least half of JWHO’s patients have to travel 40 or more miles each way to see a physician for mandated “counseling” and again on the day of their abortion. What’s more, she classifies nearly half of the clinic’s patients as “dirt poor.” 

“Some women come in with sacks full of change, quarters, and tell us, ‘These are my tips from the restaurant where I work.’ Others come with crumpled dollar bills. We get the scrapings. They almost never have enough money [abortions cost between $380 and $615] and we have to go with it, telling the boss that the woman had as much as she could raise,” says Thompson. 

While the JWHO does abortions up to 16 weeks—last year Governor Barbour pushed legislators to enact a law requiring that all abortions done after 12 weeks be performed in a licensed hospital or ambulatory surgical center; an injunction is in place to stop its enforcement. Both Hill and Thompson agree that being the state’s only clinic has put a great burden on women. “We need a clinic on the Gulf Coast and another in the northern part of the state in order to give needed service to the women of Mississippi,” Thompson says. “But I can’t imagine the health department issuing another license while  Barbour is governor.” 

For the foreseeable future, the JWHO will continue to scramble to meet patient needs, flying doctors into Jackson from Georgia and North Carolina. Help, however, may be on the way. A dormant pro-choice group, led by the Mississippi ACLU, is presently being reactivated and Nsombi Lambright, executive director of the Mississippi Civil Liberties Union, is hopeful that a wide coalition will form to support the clinic, challenge abstinence funding, and design a legislative agenda that addresses reproductive health concerns in the state.

Eleanor Bader is the co-author of Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism (St. Martin’s Press, 2001).
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