The sole abortion clinic in Mississippi, the state at the center of the US Supreme Court’s historic turnabout on women’s reproductive rights, shut its doors for the last time on Wednesday.
The conservative, underdeveloped state in the US South has passed a law outlawing all abortions, and the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, sometimes known as the Pink House because of the building’s bright walls, carried out its final pregnancy-termination procedures before the law took effect.
The Pink House Fund, which raised money to keep the facility operating, tweeted, “Today is a hard day for all of us @ the last abortion provider in Mississippi.”
It is our last day of defying all odds and showing up when no other suppliers would or could. We are happy with the work we have accomplished here.
Jackson Women’s Health rose to prominence internationally for starting the legal procedure that ultimately resulted in the US Supreme Court’s decision on June 24 to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that had established the universal right to abortion in the US.
A lawsuit against a Mississippi law that would limit abortion to 15 weeks had been filed by the clinic.
With this decision, the high court, which has turned to the right with President Donald Trump’s selection of three conservative justices, granted each state the flexibility to outlaw or preserve the legality of abortion inside its borders.
Anticipating the court’s momentous decision, thirteen states passed trigger legislation that would go into force the moment Roe v. Wade was overturned.
The 2007 statute in Mississippi, which carries penalties of up to 10 years in jail for violators, allows exceptions only when the mother’s life is in peril; rape or incest are not.
The Pink House had requested the local courts to overturn the statute, but they turned down the request, forcing the clinic to close.
Women in Mississippi who want to end a pregnancy will have to use abortion-inducing medications or fly, in some cases hundreds of miles (kilometres), to states like Illinois because the majority of Mississippi’s neighbours are also anti-abortion.
Numerous other facilities across the nation have closed their doors.
Wednesday saw the closure of Whole Woman’s Health’s four clinics in Texas and the opening of a new facility in adjacent New Mexico.
The lone abortion facility in Missouri, run by Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, discontinued all such procedures as of June 23.
Legal disputes, for instance, have pushed back the deadline in Louisiana, but ultimately, it is anticipated that access to abortion would be eliminated in nearly half of the nation’s 50 states.