Another Attempt To Close Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic

Early Monday morning, NAF member Jackson Women’s Health Organization was vandalized. In the early morning hours, a masked intruder trespassed onto the property where he cut power lines, damaged a generator the clinic is required to have onsite by the state, and destroyed the clinic’s security cameras. These tactics, unfortunately, aren’t new. Since 1977, there have been thousands of incidents of criminal activities against abortion providers.

The use of criminal—and, too often, violent– methods to attempt to shut down abortion care facilities is just one prong of anti-choice extremists’ strategy to prevent women from accessing safe and legal abortion care. As Rachel Maddow highlighted on her show Monday, another part of their strategy is to pass medically-unnecessary legislation aimed at closing clinics. Legislators in Mississippi thought they could close Jackson Women’s Health—the state’s last abortion clinic—by passing a law that required physicians providing abortion care to have admitting privileges at a near-by hospital. Fortunately, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that this requirement is unconstitutional, but Mississippi has recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. A similar admitting privileges requirement in Wisconsin was also ruled unconstitutional just this past Friday.

Despite these attempts, Jackson Women’s Health is still open and committed to providing women with the abortion care they need.

Learn more about the violence against abortion providers.

Learn more about politically-motivated, medically unnecessary TRAP laws.