Mississippi on Thursday became the seventh U.S. state to ban abortions since the Supreme Court’s U-turn on the ruling Roe v. wadewhich resulted in final face-offs in front of a clinic in Jackson.
Angry or radiant, defenders and opponents of the right to abortion clashed in front of the establishment “Jackson Women’s Health Organization”, at the heart of the Supreme Court’s decision.
Nicknamed the “pink house” because of the color of its walls, the establishment performed its last abortions on Wednesday and received its last patients on Thursday for follow-up consultations. The duty had visited it at the beginning of May.
Brandishing large posters calling for “love God with all your heart, soul, strength and spirit”, dozens of abortion opponents greeted them with prayers and music.
Opposite, abortion rights advocates responded with placards referring to the high maternal mortality rate in the state: “Why are you more interested in hypothetical lives than in real ones? or “Abortion is medical care”.
Cheryl Hamlin, one of the doctors who previously worked at the clinic, violently took on opponents of abortion, accusing them of not “respecting women’s rights”.
Behind the decision
The “pink house” was for years the only clinic to perform abortions in this conservative and very religious southern state. As such, she had taken legal action when local legislators passed a law reducing the legal time limits for abortion.
The file had reached the Supreme Court which, on June 24, took the opportunity to bury its historic judgment Roe v. wade of 1973, which guaranteed the right of all American women to terminate their pregnancies.
Anticipating this decision, 13 states had adopted laws to automatically ban abortions on their soil. It’s one of those “zombie” or “trigger” laws that went into effect Thursday in Mississippi. Adopted in 2007, it provides for ten-year prison sentences for violations.
Diane Derzis, owner of the “pink house”, now plans to move to Las Cruces, New Mexico. “For now, it is a very receptive state where we are welcome,” she explained on public radio NPR.
Other clinics are also moving to that state or to Illinois, but “I’m not sure there will be enough facilities to accommodate all the women in the South” of the country who will soon be deprived of their services. access to abortion, she added.
For now, seven US states completely ban abortion. Legal battles are delaying the deadline in Louisiana in particular, but, in the long term, access to abortion should disappear in half of the country.