Sr. Carol Keehan

Several people wearing florescent yellow vests labeled “Clinic Escort” helped women find parking places and walked with them into the cherry pink building in a Jackson retail district. Outside an iron fence that separates Jackson Women’s Health Organization from the street, abortion opponents stood on a sidewalk and implored women not to end their pregnancies.

“Mom, come talk to us. Your baby is a precious gift from God,” Leslie Hanks of Denver, who has been vice president of Colorado Right to Life, said to one woman. “Please don’t go in and see people who kill babies, ma’am.”

The woman kept walking without glancing at Hanks.

One of the clinic escorts, Laurie Bertram Roberts [pictured above], of Jackson, wore a T-shirt with the slogan, “I (Heart) My Abortion Provider.”

“No matter what side of the abortion issue you stand on, it should be important that women are not harassed, that they are not terrorized, that they are not stopped when they are trying to access safe and legal care in America, and that’s what happens to women trying to come in and out of clinics,” said Roberts, Mississippi president of the National Organization for Women.