Sawt Falasteen - Mississippi clinic at heart of US Supreme Court's abortion reversal closes

Alternately thrilled or furious, opponents and supporters of abortion rights gathered outside Jackson Women's Health Organization, the facility at the heart of the United States Supreme Court's decision stating access to pregnancy termination is not a constitutional right.

Nicknamed the Pink House because of the building's colorful walls, Jackson Women's Health performed its final abortions Wednesday and saw its last consultation patients Thursday ahead of its closure.

Brandishing signs reading "Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind," dozens of abortion rights opponents greeted the final trickle of patients with music and shouted prayers.

On the opposite side of the gathering, abortion rights advocates answered with placards referencing the poor southern state's high maternal death rate to ask, "Why do you care more about hypothetical lives than real ones?" and others proclaiming "Abortion is health care."

Cheryl Hamlin, one of the doctors who had until Thursday worked at Jackson Women's Health, vehemently took the anti-abortion protesters to task outside the pink building, accusing them of not respecting women's rights.

In recent years, Jackson Women's Health was the only place to offer abortion care in religiously conservative Mississippi. That status left the clinic as the logical organization to take legal action when state legislators passed a law restricting abortion in 2018.

The case eventually made its way to the nation's high court, which on June 24 overturned its own landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that had enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion in federal law.

Thirteen states, anticipating the seismic shift by the court, had already passed trigger laws to ban abortion, which were designed to take effect immediately after the overturning of Roe.

Approximately seven of them have so far successfully banned abortion entirely, but legal battles have delayed the end date in states such as Louisiana.

Mississippi's 2007 law, which went into effect on Thursday, carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison for violations, and provides exceptions only in cases of danger to the life of the mother -- but not for rape or incest.

Diane Derzis, the owner of Jackson Women's Health, now plans to move to Las Cruces, New Mexico, which "for the time being is a very receptive state. We've been welcomed," she told NPR public radio.

Other clinics are also in the process of relocating to New Mexico or Illinois, but, Derzis added she was concerned there would not be enough facilities to handle the influx of patients from the South crossing state lines to seek abortions.

"I'm not sure we're ready for it," she said.

Ultimately abortion access is expected to disappear in about half of the country's 50 states.

W.AbuLaban--SF-PST