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 Editorials | At Issue | July 2006 
Protesters Battle Over Mississippi Abortion Clinic
 Beth Walton - USA Today
| | Chellie Bowman of Memphis, Tennessee, participates in a pro-choice rally in Jackson, Mississippi, on Saturday. (Barbara Gauntt/Clarion-Ledger) |
Hundreds of abortion-rights advocates and abortion opponents rallied in Jackson, Miss., on Sunday for the second day of a planned weeklong battle over attempts to shut down the state's last abortion clinic.
Police tightened security around the clinic, Jackson Women's Health Organization, and stationed officers throughout the city for the duration of the rallies that began Saturday.
Operation Save America (OSA), a national group that opposes abortion, targeted the Jackson clinic this year. The group said that a statewide "victory" in Mississippi would send a message to activists everywhere that the battle to end abortion can be won.
The organization believes the movement to stop abortion will be successful sooner if it focuses on shutting down individual clinics through protests rather than working to change legislation.
"Grass-Roots Battle"
"This is a grass-roots battle that will be won with the gospel of Jesus Christ," says the Rev. Flip Benham, director of OSA, formerly known as Operation Rescue. Benham is also founder of the Garland Free Methodist Church in Texas. "Pretty soon abortion is going to become as ugly a word as slavery."
Blockading clinic entrances or attacking staff and patrons was made a federal offense in 1994. In February, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that abortion clinics could not use federal racketeering and extortion laws to block such demonstrations.
Benham says that 200 abortion-rights opponents from across the country were already in Jackson. The National Organization for Women says 300 activists showed up to counter OSA. Spokespeople for both sides said they expect their forces to grow this week.
Protests were interrupted Saturday after authorities received a call reporting a suspicious package in a trash can at Smith Park, where abortion-rights advocates were rallying. A preliminary investigation did not turn up any explosive device, said Jackson Police Department Cmdr. Tyrone Lewis.
The Jackson Women's Health Organization, which treats about 4,000 patients a year, closed early Saturday to try to avoid confrontations between its patients and abortion opponents. Still, about 60 opponents maintained a vigil in the clinic's empty parking lot - many holding large signs displaying photos of aborted fetuses.
Clinic officials say they won't be deterred. Many women travel for hours to get to the state's only clinic, says Susan Hill, president of the Jackson Women's Health Organization. "To me this isn't really a protest, it's really abusing women - the women who come into the clinic to work there, the women who come in to have surgery - screaming and yelling at them is abuse," she says. "We don't intend to be run out by a bunch of people screaming at us."
Benham says OSA activists don't yell but tell women entering the clinic that "what they think is a curse, God will turn into a wonderful blessing."
"We need to have a confrontation with the murderers of little baby boys and girls," he says.
Stricter Laws
Six clinics have closed throughout the state during the past decade because of stricter laws governing reproductive health and increased pressure from groups that oppose abortion, says Michelle Colon, president of the Jackson chapter of NOW. For two years, the Jackson clinic has been the only abortion clinic in the state.
Even if the clinic were to close, women could get abortions from private doctors in Mississippi at a higher cost, Colon says. Public hospitals in the state will also perform the procedure in cases of a threat to the mother's life, rape or incest.
"This attack is on low-income women, and it is just (the abortion opponents') first step, and that's because there is no way for them to stop women with means from taking care of what they want to take care of," says Melody Drnach of NOW.
In Jackson, where abstinence is the only sex education taught in schools, and emergency contraception is difficult to obtain, abortion-rights activists are rare, says Colon. State law requires women to receive state-directed counseling and then wait 24 hours before having an abortion.
Patients younger than 18 must obtain consent from both parents before seeking the procedure. State law also bars abortions on women who are more than 12 weeks' pregnant. |
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