Mississippi After Roe: Poorer Than Ever

Diane Derzis, the chief executive officer of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, looks up as she addresses the media during an emotional news conference Friday, June 24, 2022, held in response to he U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The ruling means the last abortion clinic in Mississippi will close. Neirin Gray Desai/MCIR

By Ann Marie Cunningham
Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting

Mississippi is already the poorest state in the nation, with many women living in rural health care deserts, as well as the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and infant and maternal mortality of any state. Despite efforts to forestall the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion in all probability will no longer be available here in the next several days, and for many women in Mississippi the situation is expected to become dire.

Most Mississippi women who need abortions are already mothers – single mothers in low-wage jobs with employers like Walmart or fast-food shops. Most are underinsured or uninsured. Of any state, Mississippi has the highest percentage of single mothers who are heads of households. Most of them are poor Black, Latina, or Choctaw Indian women.

According to Rebecca Tong, co-executive director of Trust Women Foundation, a nonprofit that has operated abortion clinics in Oklahoma and Kansas, “Most women tell us they need abortions because they want to be good parents” – able to give their children the financial and emotional support they need. They cannot afford another child.

An indication of what lies ahead in the Magnolia State can be found in a recent report in The New Yorker about a Houston, Texas, family who had to drive to New Mexico for an abortion for their 14-year old daughter. According to Planned Parenthood, she was among about 1,700 patients who have traveled to New Mexico since September 2021, when Texas restricted abortion. The medical and travel costs exhausted the Houston family’s savings, meaning they could not improve their economic situation for another decade or longer.

They also could face legal consequences. Under a Texas abortion law passed before last week’s abortion ruling, someone who “aids or abets” an abortion after cardiac activity can be detected — typically around six weeks — can be fined at least $10,000. And anyone can bring that civil action.

When the late Texas lawyer Sarah Weddington argued Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court in 1973, she talked about how disruptive an unwanted pregnancy can be – to a woman’s body, her education, her family, her economic circumstances. Norma McCorvey, who was Jane Roe, came from three generations of women in Texas who were unable to obtain abortions. As single mothers, they remained poor. If a young woman in Mississippi is forced to interrupt her  education to raise a child, pro-choice advocates say she may not be able to better herself. The consequences could be catastrophic economically for her and for her home state.

On June 24, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and upheld Mississippi’s law banning abortion after 16 weeks, Mississippi’s trigger law went into effect, making abortion illegal 10 days after state Attorney General Lynn Fitch certified it. “I bet you money that [the trigger law] was waiting for her on her desk this morning,” said Diane Derzis, chief executive officer of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, at a news conference that day.

At present, JWHO’s The Pink House, the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, is open for business, performing abortions up to 15 weeks. It is expected to close July 7, pending the outcome of a state constitutional challenge.

Pro-choice and anti-abortion factions display their positions Friday, June 24, 2022, on signs outside the Pink House where the Jackson Women’s Health Organization operates the last abortion clinic in Mississippi. It will close soon following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Neirin Gray Desai/MCIR

However, JWHO is suing to remain open. Three groups – the Mississippi Center for Justice, the Center for Reproductive Rights, whose lawyers represented JWHO before the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and the prestigious New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison – have filed for a restraining order on the basis of a 1998 decision by the Mississippi Supreme Court. In this particular case, the court found that abortion was legal according to the Mississippi state constitution. All three chancery judges in Hinds County, where Jackson is located, have recused themselves from hearing the case and requested the state Supreme Court appoint a special judge. On Thursday, the court appointed 4th District Chancery Judge Debbra K. Halford of Meadville to hear the case. She denied the request for a temporary restraining order.

Planned Parenthood in Florida is pursuing a similar tactic. Judge John C. Cooper of the Second Judicial Circuit Court in Tallahassee ruled from the bench Thursday that the 15-week abortion ban law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April, will not be enforced because it violates privacy protections in that state’s constitution. Voters wrote the amendment into the constitution in 1980 to block other abortion restrictions. Judges in Louisiana, Utah, Texas, and Kentucky have made similar rulings.

If the new case succeeds in Mississippi, JWHO could remain open, possibly aming Mississippi an abortion sanctuary state in the Deep South. If it fails, Mississippi women who need abortions will have to come up with money to travel to at least New Mexico, Colorado or Illinois – the closest states where abortion remains legal. These women will have to take time off work and will need funds to cover travel costs and probably babysitting as well.

A sign displayed behind the Jackson Women’s Health Organization news conference Friday, June 24, 2022, assures women seeking abortions that the procedure will be available at The Pink House West in New Mexico when the Mississippi clinic closes as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Ann Marie Cunningham/MCIR

Derzis said on June 24 that donations were pouring into independent funds that cover these costs, including The Pink House Fund, Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund and Alabama’s Yellowhammer Fund. In New Mexico, a woman said that her daughter, who lives in Spain, was one such donor. However, like other local funds in states where abortion’s legal future is uncertain, Yellowhammer has suspended some services. Abortion advocates encourage donors to give to the nonprofit National Network of Abortion Funds, which consists of 80 grassroots organizations in 38 states and four countries and distributes donations to states.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 63 percent of Americans support Roe v. Wade. Is that true for Mississippians? Derzis said she thought so, given the amount of local support she said the Pink House has received, on many levels – “we create a great deal of traffic and trash for local businesses.”

Are pro-life Mississippians among those whom a recent Gallup poll said would help a friend or relative who needed an abortion? Derzis said she believed they are: “It’s different when it’s someone you love.”

Several studies, including a well-known 2020 national study by the University of California-San Francisco, known as the Turnaway Study, have linked access to abortion to a woman’s ability to thrive economically, along with their children. They are able to finish their education and take higher-paying jobs. According to Kate Bahn, chief economist and director of labor market policy at the nonprofit Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 154 economists signed an amicus curiae brief for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization before the Supreme Court, stating that access to abortion enhanced women’s ability to contribute to the economy.

Without Roe v. Wade, cases of forced motherhood in Mississippi are expected to be on the horizon. Pregnancy can be very dangerous, and limited abortion access can make it worse. Black women now die of pregnancy-related causes nearly three times more frequently than White women. A 2021 study at the University of Colorado found an abortion ban could increase pregnancy-related deaths for Black women by as much as 33 percent.

Two projects are trying to help women living in health care deserts in rural areas. Nonprofit Plan A Health sends a mobile clinic in a colorful van to small towns in cotton and soybean fields like Metcalfe, outside Greenville in Washington County, the largest in the Delta. Inside the surprisingly spacious van, two community health workers and a nurse practitioner offer free prenatal and gynecological care, as well as free birth control. If a patient wants an abortion, Plan A refers her to a doctor.

Plan A Health wants to send its van to every town in the Delta, as well as the home of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Because of rural isolation and lack of education, Indians are more likely to need abortions than any other ethnic group. The nonprofit also operates a brick-and-mortar clinic in Louise that is open twice a month. The greatest obstacle to better maternal and infant health, Plan A workers say, is education.

Plan A Health's free mobile clinic for women on the main street in Metcalfe, Miss. Ann Marie Cunningham/MCIR

According to Lisa Haynie, professor of nursing at the University of Mississippi School of Nursing and director of the Mercy Delta Express Project, the school has raised funds to begin sending a van with a mobile clinic to the Delta. The school already operates a high school health clinic in the Delta’s Sharkey County. This clinic is run by first- and third-year residents from the University of Mississippi Medical Center. It dispenses free birth control and refers patients who want abortions to JWHC or to a social worker. Haynie said the school hopes for funding to run a clinic at Lanier High School in Jackson.

Another Jackson nonprofit wants to combat an additional dismal fact about maternity in Mississippi: The state leads in the number of Black women undergoing Cesareans. In a documentary, Ebony Lumumba, wife of Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, said even she was pressured to have a Cesarean. The operation is much more convenient for doctors; unlike birth after labor, it can be scheduled.

Getty Israel is founder and executive director of Sisters in Birth Inc., a Jackson nonprofit that already offers prenatal counseling and other services to pregnant women. Getty wants Black women to look back to the model of the granny midwife, who delivered most Black children during the Jim Crow era. Israel is raising $5 million to build a birthing center just outside Jackson,where pregnant women close to labor can stay and give birth with help from midwives and doulas.

In principle, Native American tribes, as sovereign nations, could offer abortions on their lands. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians declined to comment. In New Mexico, home to a large Native American population, an abortion advocate stated that most Indian nations do not want to be associated with abortion clinics.

At the state level, the legal landscape is likely to remain messy and confused for years. For example, the governor of Delaware signed a bill allowing physicians’ assistants and advanced-practice nurses to prescribe abortifacients – any drug or chemical preparation that induces abortion – joining 18 other states. The same day, CVS and Rite-Aid announced they are limiting access to abortion medications.

Some liberal prosecutors, mayors, and city council members in at least seven conservative states have pledged not to enforce strict abortion bans. But Rebecca Tong maintained, “No doctor will be willing [to offer abortions] under a promise from a prosecutor. We fly in all our doctors because of threats of violence. If [anti-abortionists] want to shoot you, they can. Dr. [George] Tiller was shot in his church.”

With the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Brenda Feigen co-directed the Women's Rights Project, formed in 1972 at the American Civil Liberties Union. “SCOTUS’s decision did not mention women,” Feigen pointed out. “It was all about tiny little fingers and toes.

 “I know Ruth must be spinning in her grave,” Feigen lamented.

Ann Marie Cunningham is MCIR’s Reporter in Residence. Contact her at amc@mississippicir.org.

This story was produced by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization that is exposing wrongdoing, educating and empowering Mississippians, and raising up the next generation of investigative reporters. Sign up for our newsletter.