Mississippi's Last Abortion Clinic May Close Soon →

Mississippi passed a law last year requiring abortion clinics in the state to have hospital admitting privileges. In a state where the stigma surrounding abortion is extreme and hospitals can refuse any service on religious grounds, this law was written to eliminate safe, legal abortion in Mississippi.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization has been refused admitting privileges by every hospital to which they’ve applied. They can argue their case in front of the Mississippi Department of Health, and attorneys have requested an injunction while they argue the law’s constitutionality. However, if these measures fail, Mississippi could soon be the only state without safe, legal abortion.

A lack of providers means the people in Mississippi will need to travel out of state to acquire an abortion provided in a safe, sterile, legal environment. For those without money to travel, cars, a place to stay, or someone to watch their children (61% of people who have abortions already have children), this may prove an impossible task.

If you or someone you know can provide any of these things - transportation, lodging, child care, funds - please message the Abortion Assistance Blog. You can contact the blog through Tumblr’s Ask, Submit, and Fan Mail functions, or by email at abortionassistanceblog@gmail.com.

motherjones:

A doctor at Mississippi’s last abortion clinic wears this alien mask whenever he heads to work.

Follow us on Instagram, where we’re posting more of Matt Eich’s photos from Jackson Mississippi. Read and listen to the full story on our website.  

Going to Mississippi: If I Don't, Who Will? →

After growing increasingly uncomfortable turning women away who needed abortion due to my feeling religiously-conflicted about providing them during my first 12 years as an ob-gyn, a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King challenged me to a deeper spiritual understanding where compassion moved me to action on behalf of my patients. Similar to the defining quality of the Good Samaritan in Dr. King’s narrative of what made the Samaritan “good”, where the Samaritan reversed the question of concern to care more about the well-being of the person needing help than about what might happen to him for stopping to do so, my concern about women when there are no abortion services became more important to me than what might happen to me for providing the services.

There are FIVE states in the US that have only ONE health clinic that offers abortion services.

iwriteaboutfeminism:

Wyoming

North Dakota

South Dakota

Arkansas

Mississippi

And the only reason Mississippi’s clinic is still open is because a federal judge has extended their temporary ban on the state’s new TRAP law (Targeted Regulations Against Abortion Providers)

There are actually three clinics in Arkansas, but two of them (both Planned Parenthoods) only offer the abortion pill, which is effective up to 9 weeks after your last period. Little Rock Family Planning Services provides abortions up to 21 weeks.

This is how anti-choicers prevent people from accessing abortion - not through legislation, but through stigma and threat of violence against providers. Two of three doctors at the Mississippi clinic fly in from out of state, because no local doctors/hospitals want to face the certain severe consequences from their colleagues, patients, family, and friends, as well as harassment and violence from anti-choice extremists.

(via stfuprolifers)

Mississippi Abortion Law Continues to be Blocked →

A federal judge on Wednesday continued to block a state law that threatened to shut down Mississippi’s only abortion clinic and make it nearly impossible for a woman to get the procedure in the state.

U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III temporarily blocked the law July 1 and extended that order Wednesday, though he did not say when he would rule on the clinic’s request to put the law on hold for a longer period. If he grants that request, the case eventually would go to trial.

…

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 established a nationwide right to abortion. In 1992, the court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey upheld the Roe decision and allowed states to regulate abortions before fetuses are viable. But the 1992 decision also said states may not place undue burdens or substantial obstacles to women seeking abortion.

If the clinic closed, the closest clinics to Jackson are about 200 miles away, in Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama.

The extension will last until the judge can read the rules on how the Mississippi Department of Health will administer the law.

Help Someone Access a Safe Abortion

The lone abortion provider in Mississippi is in danger of being shut down in a little over a week. They are being flooded with calls from people desperate to get the health care they need before it’s too late. Already, many people in Mississippi must travel out of state to get a safe, legal abortion. This requires driving for hours, possibly staying overnight, and finding someone to take care of their children (61% of people who get abortions already have at least one child).

Now’s the time for that famous southern hospitality. Mississippians need help accessing abortion. They may not have transportation, a place to stay, or child care. If you can provide any of these things, even just a ride to the clinic or a couch to sleep on for a night, please contact the Abortion Assistance Blog. Here are some of the clinics people will be visiting:

Mississippi:

Jackson Women’s Health Organization

Alabama:

New Woman All Women Health Care, Birmingham

Planned Parenthood, Birmingham

Planned Parenthood, Mobile

Reproductive Health Services of Montgomery

West Alabama Women’s Center, Tuscaloosa

Arkansas:

Planned Parenthood, Fayetteville

Planned Parenthood, Little Rock

Little Rock Family Planning Services (only clinic that provides abortions after 8 weeks)

Florida:

All Women’s Health Center, Inc., Gainesville

Bread & Roses Women’s Health Center, Gainesville

North Florida Women’s Health & Counseling Service, Tallahassee

Louisiana:

Bossier City Medical Suite

Causeway Medical Clinic, Metairie, New Orleans

Hope Medical Group for Women, Shreveport

Tennessee:

Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health

Memphis Area Medical Center for Women

Memphis Center for Reproductive Health

Planned Parenthood of the Greater Memphis Region

Planned Parenthood, Knoxville

Planned Parenthood, Nashville

The Women’s Center, Nashville

Volunteer Women’s Medical Clinic, Knoxville

If you live near any of these clinics, or have a place to stay along the journey from Mississippi, you could be the one to help someone in need access a safe, legal abortion. Please contact the Abortion Assistance Blog, and make a difference in someone’s life.

People in Mississippi who need abortions are fucking panicking →

If anyone in Mississippi or nearby states can help these people out, please contact the Abortion Assistance Blog. I can’t imagine the Jackson Women’s Health Organization will be able to provide abortions for all of these people by July 11, when the clinic’s fate will be decided. People already have to travel out of state to get the health care they so desperately need, and in the meantime, they may need transportation, a place to stay, and child care. If you or someone you know can offer any of these things, even just a ride to the clinic or a couch to sleep on for the night, please let AAB know. You can make all the difference.

(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)

Ahem.

angiospermsarenotmyforte:

tchy:

ianthe:

ididthatonce:

Starting today, there are no legal abortion clinics in the state of Mississippi.

If you live in Mississippi and are in need of an abortion, I am more than happy to house you during the time it takes to get one in Georgia, or to help you find housing in any other neighboring states.

You are not alone.

You will be cared for.

You will be safe.

signal boosting saint sarah

There were anti-choice protesters outside Parliament for the Canada Day celebrations today and I wanted to punch them all in the face. This stuff is important.

AT THE VERY VERY LAST SECOND THE JUDGE DID ISSUE A RESTRAINING ORDER. It lasts until there is a proper hearing, but his wording ( http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/01/12512670-federal-judge-blocks-law-that-would-close-only-abortion-clinic-in-mississippi source) is basically Republicans were bragging that it blocks abortion and that’s it, and that is, quite frankly, bullshit.

The hearing will be on July 11. As of now, the clinic remains open. If anyone knows of anything we can do to influence the outcome of the hearing, please share.

The Atlanta Pro-Choice Action Committee, an abortion fund, may also be able to provide transportation to and from your appointment in Georgia. Call 404-351-5924 between the hours of 7am and 5pm EST Monday-Friday, or 7am to noon on Saturday (closed on Sunday) and leave a message, slowly stating your name and phone number, and someone will return your call within 24 hours.

(via stfueverything)

BREAKING NEWS

thepoliticalfreakshow:

Federal judge temporarily blocks enforcement of Mississippi law that shuts down state’s only abortion clinic - @AP http://t.co/nFASZbGs

The Jackson Women’s Health Organization filed a lawsuit, and the judge, Daniel P. Jordan, issued a temporary restraining order. There will be a hearing on July 11 to decide whether to block the law for a longer time.

The clinic says if it closes, most women pregnant people would have to go out of state to terminate a pregnancy - something that could create financial problems for people in one of the poorest states in the nation. From Jackson, it’s about a 200-mile drive to clinics in New Orleans; Mobile, Ala.; or Memphis, Tenn.

I’m not familiar with how this process works, or what the public may be able to do to influence the outcome of the hearing. If anyone knows more, please share! This is far from over.

fuckyeahchoice:

coldheartedsensitivity:

Hoping Mississippi WILL become the (only) abortion-free state.

Once upon a time, I was a young lady in Libya. Abortion is illegal there. The only way to get an abortion was if you were both rich and well connected. We lived in the slums and this was not the case. 

Friends that could now never have a child. 

Family who suffered from infection and permanent damage to their bodies.

I laid my sister to rest. 

This is the result of inaccessible abortion. It doesn’t go away. Abortion being illegal doesn’t give any more support to those who need it, it doesn’t put money in the pockets of the impoverished pregnant person, it doesn’t cause someone to turn away from their hearts. 

You may not find abortion ideal, but this is the reality of illegal abortion. There is undoubtedly someone in your life who has had an abortion. One in four will have had one by age 30. Think if instead if one in four people had to seek an illegal abortion or be forced to give birth to a child. Think of the injured and the dead. Think of the children left behind by people who died seeking an abortion, not being able to feed one. more. hungry. mouth. It makes me sick that this can happen here. I came here to get away from that. 

I absolutely will not stand by and let this happen. Fuck that. 

(Source: weflyfair)

Mississippi Learns The Hard Way That Abstinence-Only Sex Ed Enables Teen Pregnancy Epidemic →

Color me unsurprised. I do want to highlight this paragraph:

…as misguided as abstinence-only sex ed is, advocates who fight teen pregnancy say education is only one piece of the puzzle. An article published yesterday by the Associated Press quotes a representative from the Mississippi Women’s Fund who says that poverty and class mobility are also big parts of the problem. Young women need to know they will have educational and job opportunities awaiting them if they don’t become young mothers. 

There are plenty of stories (and studies) of people who don’t expect to go to college or get a high-paying job. [Young] parenthood is the end goal they’ve seen all their lives, and it’s not surprising when many of them don’t take precautions to prevent it. By giving kids and teens opportunities for affordable education, they begin to have more realistic choices about their futures.

Side note, from the AP article mentioned:

Some in the small town about 70 miles south of Memphis, Tenn., still think teen pregnancy should be addressed in the home, not the classroom. Harold Smith, a local evangelical pastor, said sex outside marriage is a sin and parents - not educators - should teach children to avoid it.

“You’ve got to spread the gospel,” Smith said. “If they get a hold of God just right, they won’t have (children).”

(Source: thesexpotblog, via fuckyeahsexeducation)

Lester “Bubba” Carpenter Is a Ghoul

garlandgrey:

TW: Discussion of Unsafe Abortion

From The Maddow Blog:

“We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital…

“It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to—  Roe vs. Wade. So we’ve done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger. That’s what we’ve learned over and over and over.’

“But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. This became law and the governor signed it, and I think for one time, we were first in the nation in the state of Mississippi.”

Haha! Moral values! Important things, moral values. The glue that binds society and all that. I too think moral values are important, and that is why I’ve elected to point you to someone who has none.

Oh Bubba Carpenter, that inscrutable Mona Lisa smile! I can’t tell if you’re thinking about your duty to ALL the citizens of the state of Mississippi to defend their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or someone dying in pain and fear because you decided to obstruct reproductive rights to get reelected. Yes, you are quite the moral man. You care about fetuses so much you want to make sure abortions are unsafe, unsanitary, and inaccessible, because you’ve decided that if a person exercises choice in Mississippi, they should fucking die for it.

People like this are a walking, mouth-breathing example of the stark moral victory of reproductive rights. Abortion on demand without apology offers people control over their own lives and their own bodies, the ability to avoid parenthood if they know it isn’t the right choice for them or if they know they shouldn’t be parents, the ability to shape and possibly even save their own lives. Bubba is offering tickets to coercive childbirth or the graveyard. He really doesn’t give a shit which you choose, as long as you don’t really have a choice in the matter. That way he can go back to his district and tell them he fought for life. That he has made a mighty sacrifice to the Gods of blood and death and that now he is a righteous “defender of life.”

Every single on of these people are ghouls, from the politest “I just don’t think it is in God’s plan” folks to the people who can’t contain their sadistic pleasure at the suffering of fellow human beings. The fetus is, and always will be, a ploy for them. They want control. They want to be in control of your body and tell you what you can do with it. They want to indulge a perverse need for control with a hollow moral righteousness, carrying on their deep and abiding love affair for zygotes that ends the minute they are no longer inside something they want to hold dominion over.

Abortion isn’t shameful. Abortion is a natural and healthy part of life. This is shameful. This callous bloodlust.

(via keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)

No, Bubba Carpenter. Mississippi has NOT stopped abortion. You have only stopped SAFE abortion. →

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

Mississippi State Representative Bubba Carpenter, speaking to the Alcorn County GOP on Thursday, said as much:

“We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital…

“It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to—  Roe vs. Wade. So we’ve done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger. That’s what we’ve learned over and over and over.’

“But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. This became law and the governor signed it, and I think for one time, we were first in the nation in the state of Mississippi.”

Garland Grey recently wrote:

I think one of the most important things we could do is to continually find ways to make pro-choice people proud and forthright about their beliefs, to puff them up with moral superiority and FACTS and send them out into the world with the conviction that abortion isn’t shameful, not even a little, that supporting abortion is not merely the right thing to do but opposing abortion is morally obscene, and that anyone who questions these two premises is more invested in self-righteousness than they are in human lives. I think if we could drain the residual shame from the movement and create activists who aren’t simply pro-choice but who understand that being “pro-life” is a symptom of not knowing what the fuck you’re talking about and not giving a damn as long as you can think of yourself as morally superior, we could move this fight toward a decisive victory.

What Bubba Carpenter says here, that it doesn’t matter if people seeking abortions die because forcing people into unsafe abortions is a winning MORAL position, shows how completely morally-corrupt the anti-choice position actually is. Bubba Carpenter is “pro-life”, via Garland’s on-spot definition, because he doesn’t give a damn about any actual people. Carpenter sees himself as morally superior to every person who has gotten an abortion or will ever get one. It’s hard to see the humanity in others when you are looking down at them from so far up on high. 

Bubba Carpenter and the “morality” that he represents are truly disgusting. And there is nothing - NOTHING - pro-life about it.

How convenient for Bubba and other anti-choicers that they think morality starts and ends between your legs, because I can’t see where else they could be keeping theirs.

Also of interest: Bubba voted against a bill that would require the State Board of Education and State Board of Health to establish a pilot program for comprehensive (minus abortion), age-appropriate sex ed in high risk school districts. The bill, of course, stalled in the Senate committee. Mississippi must really love unplanned, unwanted pregnancies!

(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)

Update on Forced Ultrasound Laws

rhrealitycheck:

Virginia is now the 8th state with forced ultrasounds before abortion. When it passed its law, it joined Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. 

Texas has the harshest forced ultrasound law currently in effect. As Andrea Grimes reported,

“Texas has the most extreme law that’s being enforced right now,” says the Center For Reproductive Rights’ Julie Rikelman, the lead attorney on the CRR’s lawsuit filed against the Texas legislation. Despite the sympathetic leanings of a federal district judge who initially ruled on the case, the suit has more or less been stalled by a vehemently anti-choice Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied the CRR’s requested injunction against enforcement last month.  Now, that means that all aspects of the law—mandated ultrasounds, 24-hour waiting periods, and forced speech—are now in full force in Texas.

Oklahoma’s forced ultrasound bill, which was similar to TX’s, was struck down by a federal court recently.

North Carolina, which also has passed a harsh TX-style forced ultrasound bill, is unable to enforce their law pending a court decision.

Pennsylvania’s forced ultrasound bill is officially kaput, at least for this year.

And, as Robin Marty reports, Iowa:

What is the difference between a traffic light camera and a mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound?  One is a violation of privacy, according to Iowa legislators.

Can you guess which?

The Iowa legislature is considering banning traffic cameras due to “privacy concerns.”  And those who are arguing for the ban are the same who think all women should be forced to undergo forced ultrasounds prior to an abortion.

These laws will affect all those with the ability to become pregnant.

(via stfuconservatives)