jwhoby Kelli

Inside Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there’s growing uncertainty over how much longer the doors will be open. Dr. Willie Parker flies in from Chicago to perform abortions at the clinic, one of two physicians who come to Mississippi to provide abortion care.

Parker is a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging Mississippi’s law. He’s a board-certified OB-GYN but has not been able to get admitting privileges at any of the 13 regional hospitals he applied to.

“Some we received no response from, but the ones that we did, they made reference to the fact that because the care we provide is related to abortion, they felt it might be disruptive to the internal politics, as well as the external politics, for the hospital,” Parker says.

Parker says it is part of a strategy to gut the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion by abusing the regulatory authority of the states and making access to abortion “so cumbersome as to be impractical even when it remains legal.”

Bebe Anderson is with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Parker….

“Under the Supreme Court’s rulings, this law would definitely constitute what’s called an ‘undue burden’ because it would really block women’s access to safe, legal abortion throughout the state of Mississippi,” Anderson says. “Therefore it’s unconstitutional.”

Terri Herring, director of the Pro Life America Network, helped craft Mississippi’s legislation and is hopeful it will withstand legal scrutiny.

“I think it’s going to be hard for the court to decide that because Mississippi has one abortion clinic that it should be allowed to be unsafe,” Herring says.

~ Debbie Elliott, NPR.org, April 28

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