GOP legislatures in some states seek ways to undermine voters’ ability to determine abortion rights

Legislative efforts in Missouri and Mississippi are attempting to prevent voters from having a say over abortion rights

By CHRISTINE FERNANDO Associated Press
January 28, 2024

CHICAGO -- Legislative efforts in Missouri and Mississippi are attempting to prevent voters from having a say over abortion rights, building on anti-abortion strategies seen in other states, including last year in Ohio.

Democrats and abortion rights advocates say the efforts are evidence that Republican lawmakers and abortion opponents are trying to undercut democratic processes meant to give voters a direct role in forming state laws.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/gop-legislatures-states-seek-ways-undermine-voters-ability-106743537


USA – Abortion debate has dominated this election year. Here are Tuesday’s races to watch

BY ROBERT YOON
November 6, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The most-watched races in Tuesday’s off-year general election have all been dominated by the ongoing debate over abortion rights.

From a reelection bid for governor in Kentucky to a statewide ballot measure in Ohio to state legislative elections in Virginia, access to abortion has been a frequent topic in campaign debates and advertising, as it has since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in June last year overturning Roe vs. Wade.
Here’s a look at three major races and how abortion has shaped each contest.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/election-2023-kentucky-mississippi-governor-virginia-ohio-abortion-uvalde-houston-c1ebf7c4af31da60bd96a8158c86fb29


Mississippi – She Wasn’t Able to Get an Abortion. Now She’s a Mom. Soon She’ll Start 7th Grade.

BY CHARLOTTE ALTER/CLARKSDALE, MISS.
AUGUST 14, 2023

Ashley just had a baby. She’s sitting on the couch in a relative’s apartment in Clarksdale, Miss., wearing camo-print leggings and fiddling with the plastic hospital bracelets still on her wrists. It’s August and pushing 90 degrees, which means the brown patterned curtains are drawn, the air conditioner is on high, and the room feels like a hiding place. Peanut, the baby boy she delivered two days earlier, is asleep in a car seat at her feet, dressed in a little blue outfit. Ashley is surrounded by family, but nobody is smiling. One relative silently eats lunch in the kitchen, her two siblings stare glumly at their phones, and her mother, Regina, watches from across the room. Ashley was discharged from the hospital only hours ago, but there are no baby presents or toys in the room, no visible diapers or ointments or bottles. Almost nobody knows that Peanut exists, because almost nobody knew that Ashley was pregnant. She is 13 years old. Soon she’ll start seventh grade.

Continued: https://time.com/6303701/a-rape-in-mississippi/


These States Are Using Fetal Personhood to Put Women Behind Bars

Hundreds of women who used drugs while pregnant have faced criminal charges — even when they deliver healthy babies.

By CARY ASPINWALL, The Marshall Project
July 25, 2023

When Quitney Armstead learned she was pregnant while locked up in a rural Alabama jail, she made a promise — to God and herself — to stay clean.

She had struggled with addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder for nearly a decade, since serving in the Iraq War. But when she found out she was pregnant with her third child, in October 2018, she resolved: “I want to be a mama to my kids again.”

Continued: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/07/25/pregnant-women-prosecutions-alabama-oklahoma


Denied an abortion, she raised a child: One Mississippi mom shares her story

"I love my child to the ends of the earth. That doesn’t make what happened any less unfair.”

June 30, 2023
By Danielle Campoamor

Laurie Bertram Roberts remembers the emotion that consumed her when, as a 19-year-old single mom of two, she needed an abortion.

Fear.

She was only three months postpartum and recovering from a C-section when she found out she was pregnant again. She's now 45, but vividly remembers desperately searching for the nearest clinic, poring over every weathered phonebook she could find as her newborn slept in her arms.

Continued: https://www.today.com/parents/moms/abortion-mississippi-mom-had-baby-rcna90226


Abortion ruling means more and riskier births in Mississippi

Oct. 24, 2022
By MICHAEL GOLDBERG, The Associated Press

GREENWOOD, Miss. (AP) — In Mississippi, where health officials expect 5,000 more births each year as a result of the Supreme Court ruling upending abortion rights, children are more likely to die before their first birthday than in any other state.

Mississippi has the nation’s highest fetal mortality rate, highest infant mortality rate, highest pre-term birth rate and is among the worst states for maternal mortality. Black women are nearly three times more likely to die due to childbirth than white women in Mississippi.

Continued: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/abortion-ruling-means-more-and-riskier-births-in-mississippi/


Mississippi’s last abortion clinic shuts down. The owner promises to continue working

July 7, 2022
JACLYN DIAZ

Mississippi's last abortion clinic — and the one at the center of the Supreme Court case used to overturn Roe v. Wade — shut its doors for the last time.

Earlier this week, the Jackson Women's Health Organization lost their bid to temporarily block the state's trigger law that bans most abortions from going into effect. Now, they are packing up and moving out, Diane Derzis who owned the clinic said.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/07/1110289142/mississippi-abortion-clinic-shuts-down


Inside the Mississippi abortion clinic that triggered Supreme Court ruling: ‘Everyone who kills babies deserves to die’

The Jackson Women’s Health Organization lost its case against the state, with the justices ruling to overturn ‘Roe vs Wade.’ The center, which has been targeted by pro-life protesters, must now close its doors. But it plans to reopen in New Mexico

Luis Pablo Beauregard
JUN 27, 2022

The Jackson Women’s Health Organization is known in the capital of Mississippi as the Pink House. Its fame reached new heights on Friday after it lost a Supreme Court against the state of Mississippi over its 2018 law that banned nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In a 6-3 ruling, the conservative-led court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion in 1973.

The news – while expected – still came as a shock to Diane Derzis, the 68-year-old owner of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, who says she does not intend to give up. “Women have always had abortions. It has been an honor and a privilege to be here,” she said outside the clinic, before revealing that she plans to continue operating at the Pink House for 10 more days and then open a new clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico, 1,600 kilometers (373 miles) from Jackson. Derzis, who has been providing reproductive health services to women for 46 years, intends to continue serving Mississippi patients at the new center.

Continued:https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-06-27/inside-the-mississippi-abortion-clinic-that-triggered-supreme-court-ruling-everyone-who-kills-babies-deserves-to-die.html


The state fighting to dismantle abortion rights has a long history of permissive abortion laws

by Isabelle Taft
June 8, 2022

When Mississippi asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, it argued that a long tradition of state restrictions on abortion in the U.S. “defeats any claim of a deeply rooted right” to an abortion.

Yet for all but 21 of its 156 years as a state prior to Roe, Mississippi law technically permitted abortion for any reason until about 16 weeks of pregnancy.

Continued: https://mississippitoday.org/2022/06/08/mississippi-abortion-history/


The last abortion clinic in Mississippi only employs out-of-state doctors. Two are from Massachusetts.

By Hanna Krueger Globe Staff
Updated May 21, 2022

The Jackson Women’s Health Organization, known colloquially as the Pink House for its flamingo-colored stucco exterior, is the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi.

It will almost certainly be the last.

Continued: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/21/nation/last-abortion-clinic-mississippi-only-employs-out-of-state-doctors-two-are-massachusetts/