Missouri Governor Eric Greitens has gone out of his way to make things as difficult as possible for women seeking reproductive health services and abortions. Before last week, Missouri’s restrictive laws had already reduced abortion services to one location in the entire state. But that wasn’t enough for Greitens. He called a special session of the Missouri legislature specifically to deal with abortion issues—and specifically  to make things worse—and  the legislature obliged.

Republican Gov. Eric Greitens has said he called the special session on abortion in reaction to the St. Louis ordinance banning discrimination in employment and housing based on “reproductive health decisions” and a federal judge’s ruling that struck down some Missouri abortion restrictions passed in previous legislative sessions.

The ruling, which the state is appealing, tossed out requirements that doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, and that clinics meet hospital-like standards for outpatient surgery.  Greitens wants lawmakers to enact other restrictions on clinics in place of those that were struck down.

Here’s what he got in the special session: The latest piece of legislation in Missouri encompasses a long list of new, even harsher regulations. Judge for yourself.

The Missouri legislature has now passed a bill that:

• Allows the state attorney general, not just local prosecutors, to prosecute
  abortion-law violations
• Requires doctors—not nurses, nurse practitioners or other medical
  personal—to explain potential medical risks to women 72 hours before they
  can obtain an abortion
• Establishes surprise, annual inspections of abortion clinics
• Establishes whistle-blower protections for employees of abortion clinics
• Bars local governments from passing ordinances that adversely affect alternative-to-abortion pregnancy centers—the ones that, nationwide, tell women lies and omit information needed for them to make good decisions about their reproductive health.

Of course, these new restrictions will be challenged in court. We can only hope that they will be struck down. They are shockingly harsh. But what is not shocking is the unrelenting effort by Missouri legislators—and now the newly elected Missouri Governor—to go out of their way to block women from exercising their lawful right to make their own health decisions—a right that has been guaranteed by the US Supreme Court since 1973.  Missouri has many problems: This is the one they go to special session on?

The post Missouri’s 2017 abortion law is as harsh as they get appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If you had an abortion in Missouri between 2010 and 2015, you’re on Missouri State Senator Kurt Schaefer’s hit list.

Schaefer, a Republican, demanded that  Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region turn over the list. He made the same demand of a St. Louis-area pathologist.

Schaefer’s excuse? He’s “investigating” those already-proven-bogus allegations that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissues for profit.  Missouri’s Attorney General has already examined those charges against Planned Parenthood, and found no wrongdoing. Not to mention that the creator of the maliciously edited videos circulated to “prove” the case has been indicted in Houston, TX for creating the misleading videos.

Need I mention that a federal law passed in 1996 sets up strict guidelines for healthcare facilities and providers to protect the private of patients’ healthcare records? It’s a well-known law called HIPAA. And should Schaefer try to say that Planned Parenthood should be exempt from HIPAA protections, he’d be contradicting his party’s own view of Planned Parenthood. In other actions related to Planned Parenthood, Republican lawmakers have made it clear that they view Planned Parenthood as a medical facility. They’ve insisted on a vast range of changes that generally apply to healthcare facilities: hospital-admitting privileges for doctors performing abortions, ambulances on call, hospital-like hallways and driveways. There’s no question that HIPAA applies.

But none of these things has stopped Schaefer. He has not specified what he would do if he got the names, but it’s a scary prospect. One can imagine the abortion-shaming that would follow. And make no mistake, previous actions by Missouri Republican lawmakers demonstrate that they are quite capable and willing to go to extremes.

A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial called this latest Republican gambit “a thinly veiled effort to expose the identities of abortion patients as a means of shaming and discouraging other women from exercising their constitutional rights.”

We can only hope that Schaefer is not really serious about this strategy: After all, he’s running for Missouri Attorney General, so attacking Planned Parenthood is good for arousing the base.  And one would expect cooler legal heads to prevail in the courts when this outrageous demand is challenged.

So far, Schaefer has not backed down, and he’s supported by the Missouri Senate’s Rules and Ethics committee, which last week approved a resolution to compel Planned Parenthood’s CEO to “appear before the whole Senate to explain why they should not be punished for failing to comply with the demand.”

He has threatened the CEO of Planned Parenthood with “contempt,” if she does not produce the desired list. That’s pretty ironic. What’s really contemptible is Schaefer’s behavior.

The post MO legislator wants names of women who’ve had an abortion appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A Missouri state representative has pre-filed a bill that would make it as difficult to buy a gun as it is to get an abortion. According to St. Louis Magazine, Democratic State Rep. Stacey Newman’s bill would “require anyone buying a gun to follow the restrictions required of women seeking abortions, including a 72-hour waiting period.”

Newman is a long-time advocate for common-sense gun laws, and also a pro-choice activist, which makes her a fish out of water in the predominantly right-wing-Republican Mo legislature, where she is regularly subjected to jeers, sneers and outright insults. Still, she has courageously drafted House Bill 1397, which states that before Missourians could buy a gun,  they’d have to:

• Meet with a licensed physician to discuss the risks of gun ownership at least 72 hours before attempting to buy a gun and obtain a written notice approval.
• Buy the gun from a licensed gun dealer located at least 120 miles from the purchaser’s legal residence.
• Review the medical risks associated with firearms, including photographs of fatal firearm injuries, and the alternatives to purchasing a firearm, including “materials about peaceful and nonviolent conflict resolution,” with the gun dealer orally and in writing.
• Watch a 30-minute video about fatal firearm injuries. (This requirement mirrors House Bill 124 from last year, which would have required women to watch a video with information about abortion they’re already required to receive from doctors orally and in writing.)
• Tour an emergency trauma center at the nearest qualified urban hospital on a weekend between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., when gun violence victims are present, and get written verification from a doctor.
• Meet with at least two families who have been victims of gun violence and two local faith leaders who have officiated, within the last year, a funeral for a victim of gun violence who was under the age of 18.

In a state where Republican legislators loudly position themselves as “pro-life” and insist on ever-increasing restrictions on abortion–a constitutionally protected medical procedure–her bill calls their bluff by applying those restrictions equally to the “constitutionally protected” right to bear arms.

In a press release, Newman explained the rationale behind her proposed bill:

If we truly insist that Missouri cares about ‘all life’, then we must take immediate steps to address our major cities’ rising rates of gun violence. Popular proposals among voters, including universal background checks and restricting weapons from abusers and convicted felons, are consistently ignored each session. Since restrictive policies regarding a constitutionally protected medical procedure are the GOP’s legislative priority each year, it makes sense that their same restrictions apply to those who may commit gun violence.

It’s clever. It’s in-your-face. Maybe it’s even a bit tongue-in-cheek. And, of course, it’s doomed to fail in the legislature. But it makes a great point, doesn’t it? What a brilliant idea.

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“Grandma” is a trifle of a movie with the socially redeeming characteristic of portraying an accepting attitude toward  abortions. Unlike most Hollywood films, broadcast-TV dramas and even many independent productions aimed at a mainstream audience, this movie normalizes abortion—portraying it as the legal medical procedure that it has been since 1973.

That’s different, because in so many movies depicting reproductive decision-making, the preferred outcome is that the woman, after some soul-searching (or pressure from parents, ministers, friends or even the father) decides to keep the baby. I’m not sure whose preferences are being expressed there, but that seems to be the “acceptable,” “uplifting, “feel-good” ending chosen by the majority of movies tackling—or just touching on—this subject.

The Grandma of this film is played by Lily Tomlin [a women’s rights advocate in “real life”] who is clearly comfortable in the role of the no-nonsense, wise-cracking, pot-smoking truth-teller. She gets embroiled in her teenage granddaughter’s quest for an abortion when she’s asked to contribute $500 to cover the fee for the procedure.

What sets this movie apart is that there’s no moralizing, no lecturing the granddaughter about the evils of terminating a pregnancy [except for some nasty harassment by anti-choice demonstrators awaiting her in the clinic parking lot]. The main characters—Grandma, the granddaughter and her uptight mother—all treat the abortion as a legal, non-shameful part of the healthcare landscape. No one is particularly overjoyed that the granddaughter has become pregnant—but neither do they scold her for making the personal choice to end her pregnancy. No one loves the idea of the abortion, either. Grandma remembers her scary, illegal abortion in the years before Roe v Wade. The granddaughter clearly feels nervous about the procedure and maybe even a bit conflicted about going through with it. It seems to me that those are the normal emotions that one would have when faced with the situation. She’s certainly not cavalier about it, as anti-reproductive zealots would have us believe is the case for women seeking abortions.

So, although the movie has some moments of gratuitously slapstick comedy [Grandma smacks her granddaughter’s jerk of a boyfriend in the nuts with his own hockey stick], it redeems itself by at least trying to present a sympathetic view of how abortions actually take place in real-world women’s clinics. [This is especially timely as politicians attempt to undermine, using faked and misleadingly edited videos as “evidence,” the work done by Planned Parenthood and other women’s clinics to help women get legal abortions as well as other critical reproductive health services.] I appreciated the filmmakers’ depiction of the clinic’s staff as caring and understanding of the difficult emotions a young pregnant woman might be feeling.

“Grandma” probably won’t win many awards—in fact, when anti-reproductive-rights activists figure out what’s in it, it may generate boycotts, protests and attempts at public shaming.[ It’s worth noting that, in my part of the world, this movie is being shown not at the big-box multiplexes, but at an independent cinema, where it’s less likely to draw attention to itself.]

It’s just such a sad commentary on the nature of contemporary political (and artistic) dialogue that a movie with a calm, matter-of-fact message about abortion is the exception to the rule.

The post “Grandma” offers a refreshing, accepting view of abortion appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Abortion opponents often like to dwell on minutia, such as whether or not Planned Parenthood profits from making embryonic organs available for life-saving research. If not that, then they like to have absolute answers to esoteric questions like what is the meaning of life. What most opponents of abortion do not do very well is to look at abortion as a vexing problems that challenges the mind and heart of any woman facing an unplanned, or even unwanted, pregnancy. Pro-choice supporters seem to have more empathy for the mother. And that is certainly needed, since there are few times in life when any individual faces a more difficult question than whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.

We are becoming more and more aware that one of the defining differences between progressives and conservatives is where they fall on the empathy continuum. There is clearly an empathy gap with progressives not only feeling far more than conservatives, but also looking for societal responses to aid those among us who need help..

Driven in part by a lack of empathy towards a woman facing a reproductive choice, conservatives have succeeded in making it much more difficult for American women, particularly those who are not wealthy, to have access to abortion facilities. First, they barred most hospitals that receive federal money from performing abortions, thus eliminating the most logical and convenient venue for a woman seeking an out-patient procedure where she could discuss and possibly terminate a pregnancy. Next, conservatives made the licensing of abortion facilities much more difficult and expensive than they were immediately following the Roe v Wade decision in 1973. Currently, six states have only one clinic providing safe, legal abortions (Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming). Combined with parental permission regulations, what is a fifteen year old pregnant girl to do if she becomes pregnant (possibly from someone living in her own household) and she lives miles from a clinic?

Most clinics, especially those run by Planned Parenthood, will not provide abortion services without first discussing options with the pregnant woman. The three options are (a) carrying the pregnancy to term, with the biological mother keeping the child, (b) carrying the pregnancy to term and placing the child for adoption, or (c) terminating the pregnancy. These are difficult decisions. Planned Parenthood tries not to overload pregnant women with arguments based on emotion and laced with guilt. Planned Parenthood respects the minds and hearts of the women who seek their services, offering comfort and supportive discussion as a woman moves towards a decision.

Organizations like Medical Students for Choice see abortion as part of mainstream medicine. As such, there should be a sufficient number of OB/GYNs trained to perform abortions. The doctors need support staff to help women with their decisions, and facilities should certainly be as numerous as there are fully-staffed hospitals in the community.

Conservatives drive our attention to superfluous considerations. By distracting us from the real needs of women, they allow the conversation to become vitriolic and accusatory. Empathy is thrown out the window. One could reasonably argue that progressives have more empathy for the fetus than opponents of abortion, because progressives support a lifelong safety-net for the child.

There are many reasons why a woman might seek an abortion. Who are we as society to judge which, if any, reasons are good and which are not? What we as a society can do is to be compassionate and understanding.That includes removing barriers to facilities where a woman can peacefully make her decision.

Those who are pro-choice need to move the conversation away from innocuous secret videos to the real concerns of women facing unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. As we do so, we must also make a variety of birth control available to women and men. We will show how much we value life by how much we value the quality of life.

Clinics that perform abortions are in the cross-hairs of those who oppose choice. These clinics must quietly go about their business and not engage in rhetoric, even dialogue that can inflame opponents of abortion. That is why those of us who are pro-choice, and who are not associated with a choice clinic, have a special obligation to advance the conversation by focusing on the real issues rather than the distractions.

The post Abortion: Focusing on the real issues, not the distractions appeared first on Occasional Planet.

What’s in a choice? Options. In order to make a choice, you must have options. As descendants of those who fled religious persecution, many of our forefathers understood the importance of options and the power of choice. That’s why they guaranteed our right to freely exercise religion in the first amendment. I think we can all agree that’s a good thing.

I read an article the other day that I can’t get out of my mind about reproductive care in Catholic hospitals. As @JillFilipovic reports on Al Jazeera America:

Catholic health care providers are bound by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, a document issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that governs how health care providers should deal with reproductive issues, end-of-life care, the “spiritual responsibility” of Catholic health care and a variety of other concerns. The range of women’s health care options that Catholic facilities offer is limited — sometimes, like when a pregnancy goes wrong, to a deadly degree. And while most doctors have an ethical obligation to inform patients of all their options, Catholic facilities routinely refuse to offer even abortions necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life; their doctors are also barred from telling a patient with a nonviable pregnancy that there are other, often safer options available elsewhere, lest the patient seek care at another facility. (LGBT patients may also run into problems, whether it is with hormone therapy for transgender patients or simply the right of married same-sex partners to be treated as next of kin in making health care decisions).

Some other particularly disturbing accounts from the article:

Tamesha Means, a Michigan woman, had a different, more terrifying experience. Her water broke at 18 weeks, too early for the fetus to be likely to survive. A friend drove her to the closest hospital, a Catholic facility where medical providers told Means the baby would probably not live, but they refused to terminate her pregnancy. She went back a second time and was sent home, despite being at risk of infection and in excruciating pain. The third time she went back, this time bleeding, in pain, running a fever and suffering from an infection from a miscarriage in progress, she was again directed to go home. She went into labor while filling out hospital discharge paperwork. Only then did hospital employees begin to attend to her. She delivered, and the very premature infant died shortly thereafter.

In one case in Arizona, a pregnant mother of four went to a Catholic hospital’s emergency room with a condition so life-threatening that her chances of imminent death without an abortion were nearly certain. She was too ill to transfer to another facility, so the hospital’s administrator, a nun, approved an emergency termination. The woman lived. The nun was excommunicated. Her standing with the church was eventually restored, but the hospital lost its 116-year affiliation with the Catholic Church.

As a 25-year-old woman, who went to a Catholic hospital only a few hours prior to reading that article, it really resonated. I immediately recalled how the woman checking me in had asked if I’d disclose my religious affiliation — I declined. And upon further reflection I realized that my general practitioner/gynecologist’s office was a part of the same Catholic healthcare system as the hospital. At no point was I informed by my doctor that seeking care at a Catholic facility could affect my access to care.

In outrage, I shared this with a friend. She responded, ”I agree that it’s poor healthcare practice, though I do think private hospitals should have the right to make such management choices….just as I think Catholic or Jewish schools can rightfully teach religion and god in a manner that would be completely unacceptable in public school.” Her school analogy challenged my initial gutteral rage reaction, transforming it into thinking. I must say that it also helped that my friend concluded our email with the prompt, “What do you think?”

 Options and choices

When there’s a choice in the matter (a choice defined by the existence of economically and logistically viable options), I don’t really have a problem with the dogma. If parents or children don’t like the way religion is taught at a private school, they’re free to choose a public alternative (even if the quality of education is worse). In this scenario, parents/children can weigh their options and make the best decision for them. If they choose to attend the private school that teaches a religion different than their own, that’s their choice. They are free to choose the imposition.

With hospitals, I don’t think that these options exist. When the only option is a regional hospital and that hospital has a religious affiliation that prevents its staff from offering certain services, patients are left with no choice but to abide by the rules of a religion they may not even believe in — and with concrete consequences to their health. I think that’s tyranny.

And it’s not just a rural vs. urban thing either. The power dynamic between hospital and patient is different than that between school and child/parent. If a school isn’t good for a child, the parent can transfer the kid to another school – and the parent/child can actually take time to weigh the decision and explore other options. When somebody’s bleeding to death, the only option is the closest hospital. And once the person walks (or is carried) through the hospital doors, they are going to get treated at that hospital.

For instance, if harm befalls a pregnant woman and she’s taken by an ambulance or whomever to the nearest hospital that happens to be Catholic, she literally has no other option but the Catholic hospital. And then if there’s some complication where it’s save the mother vs. save the baby and the mother is not offered lifesaving options due to the hospital’s religious beliefs, that is an infringement upon her religious rights.

 Freedom of religion

Inherent in the freedom to exercise one’s religion is the right to NOT exercise a religion. And in the case of religious hospitals, the religious institution is trampling the right of the individual to not follow the doctrine of a religion he/she doesn’t believe in – and in life and death situations.

I just don’t think hospitals should have religious rights. Perhaps unless they’re exclusively serving those that ascribe to their religious doctrine. If only practicing Catholics were tended to by the Catholic hospitals and then denied certain care that’s deemed anti-Catholic, that’d be a different story. Their religion, their choice. Not tyranny. On the other hand, when the hospital follows its religion to the detriment of its non-religious patient and doesn’t allow the patient to make the tough ethical call, then I strongly feel that that’s the exact type of tyranny our forefathers were trying to avoid with the 1st amendment.

Also what about the ethical implications for non-Catholic doctors, nurses, etc. who work at Catholic hospitals? Surely not all who work at Catholic hospitals are Catholic…

I definitely don’t hate religion, and I understand the need for certain institutions to center the way they run things around a certain religion without fear of reprimand from the government. But where is the balance? What about the individual’s right to follow or not follow a religion?

The post Lesson learned: My Catholic hospital can limit my medical choices appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I never thought I’d hear myself say this: I love Texas. Well, to be a bit clearer: I love Texas women. To clarify further: I love the badass, pro-reproductive-rights, Texas women who stood up to the Texas legislature yesterday [June, 25, 2013] and prevented it from passing one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws ever proposed. And in particular, I love Wendy Davis, the courageous Texas state senator who filibustered the bill under nearly impossible rules, until past the legislatively imposed midnight deadline.

AlterNet gives a full account of Davis and the heroic effort of her cohorts. Here’s the heart of the story:

SB5 would have closed nearly every abortion clinic in the state, leaving only a handful of locations where women in Texas can safely and legally procure the procedure. It also would have outlawed abortion after 20 weeks, directly contradicting Roe v. Wade.

…Davis literally stood with Texas woman for eleven hours, unable to even lean against a podium for support, let alone take a bathroom break or eat. Determined to strike down the bill to which she brought national attention, Davis flat-out refused to yield.

After hours of Davis delivering facts about the necessity of access to abortion and heart-wrenching testimony from women across the country, Texas republicans decided they just couldn’t take any more of her talking and moved to shut her right up. They claimed she violated the filibuster’s “three-strike” rules, twice by allegedly veering off topic by bringing up topics like Planned Parenthood’s budget, mandatory sonograms, and Roe v. Wade (not “germaine,” the GOP claimed), and also by receiving assistance to strap on a backbrace. Shortly after 10 p.m., her Senate foes said she had broken the rules and the filibuster was over.

Attempts to silence Davis resulted in an in eruption of shouting, as supporters yelled “LET HER SPEAK!” At 11 p.m., Democratic senators challenged the end of the filibuster and debated the rules, postponing the vote about 11:45 p.m.. Backing Davis were Sen. Kirk Watson, Sen. Rodney Ellis and Sen. Leticia Van De Putte, who came from her father’s funeral in San Antonio to stand with Davis and Texas women.

The crowd loudly refused to accept the filibuster’s end. Chanting ensued for a straight 15 minutes, drowning out the vote.

Sen. Robert Lloyd Duncan asked for “order” to no avail, and the unruly crowd was ordered out of the building so that the Republicans could have their way and throw away women’s rights in some peace and quiet.

But then, the article continues, “the Senate Republican pulled some really shady shit.”

The Senate passed the bill minutes after the midnight deadline, but the GOP went ahead and changed the document to pretend they met the deadline anyway:

The initial time stamp on the Capitol website and on Senate documents placed the vote at 12:02 or 12:03 on June 26. But then someone mysteriously changed the time stamp to make it appear SB5 passed before the deadline. The time stamp evidence, circulated on Twitter, eventually forced GOP leaders to admit defeat, at least for tonight.

By 12:45 AM, protesters were cleared from the room, and a couple of hours later, the bill was officially dead.

That’s the kind of protest we can all believe in. And we’re going to need a lot more of it. Texas Governor Rick Perry has already called for a special session of the legislature to reconsider the bill.

The post Eleven-hour filibuster stops Texas abortion law…for now appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Maybe it’s because I’m from Missouri, a  mishmash state with no clear identity except low self-esteem.

I wouldn’t say the same thing about the United States.  We are the world’s oldest living democracy and have special responsibilities around the globe.  Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were created right out of the pages of The Enlightenment.  We have genuine principals by which we try to live, something that is not particularly true for the state of Missouri or for that matter any other state.

I wondered even more-so when I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Bill Keller entitled States Gone Wild.  Keller writes:

No sooner had Arkansas adopted the country’s most regressive abortion law earlier this month — a ban after about 12 weeks of pregnancy — than North Dakota lowered its limit to as early as six weeks. Both measures are expected to be ruled unconstitutional, but here’s my question: Is North Dakota that much more conservative than, say, South Dakota, where abortions are permitted up to 24 weeks?

American states gone wild is somewhat like Balkanization gone wild.  Consistency is more of an accident than the result of a thought-out plan.  Imagine being a woman in North Dakota who is slightly more than six weeks pregnant and whose choice is to have an abortion.  You might think that you’re in luck because abortions are legal in South Dakota through the 24^th week.  However there is only one clinic in South Dakota.  If you live in northwestern North Dakota, you have to drive 646 miles, nine hours and fifty-three minutes, just for an initial examination at that clinic in Sioux Falls, SD.

Keller points out:

Colorado has now decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. Is Colorado really more libertarian than neighboring Wyoming, where possession can still get you a year in prison?

Pennsylvania allows same-sex couples to adopt children. Are Pennsylvanians so much more enlightened than the citizens of Ohio, where gay parents have hardly any rights?

And when the issue is life and death, he says:

Maryland has just decided to repeal the death penalty. Good for Maryland. But why not Delaware, next door, where the 17 inmates on death row are still biding time until their lethal injections?

Not everything is so discombobulated from state to state.  Living in Louisville may be very similar to Cincinnati; Portland, ME similar to Portland, OR.  But why should basic human rights such as civil rights, the freedom to marry who one wishes, and the guarantee of free and open access to voting be so different from state to state?  The proponents of states’ rights often call our fifty sub-sections laboratories for experimentation.  That can indeed be true; among the best examples is Massachusetts cobbling together a health care program based on an individual mandate.  Obama liked Mitt Romney’s idea so much that he copied it on the federal level.

While “laboratory for experimentation” sounds uplifting, in reality it might just as justifiably be called “Race to the Bottom.”  Which state can make abortion most restrictive or which state has the lowest regard for a clean environment?  As Keller says, “the state labs may cook up poisons — Arizona’s anti-immigrant statutes, or those new, restrictive abortion laws — and you pray that Congress or the courts will find an antidote.”

The bottom line is that the principles that form the foundation of our democracy and respect for human rights come from the federal government.  A suggested course of action: (1) stop fiddling at the state level with issues that are far too important and far-reaching for them to handle, and (2) encourage all three branches of the federal government to step forward and recognize that the 21^st Century (and probably the two preceding centuries) require federal leadership to ensure the viability and the functionality of our system.

The post How out of date are states? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Over the last weekend in January 2013, Jackson Women’s Health Services applied a coat of bright-pink paint to its building at the corner of  State Street and Fondren Avenue in Jackson, Mississippi. While the  name of the paintcolor hasn’t been publicized, it might aptly be nicknamed “Pink with a Purpose,” or “In Your Face Pink,” because Jackson Women’s Health Organization chose the color to make a statement.

“It’s a woman’s color,” said clinic Owner Diane Derzis. “It’s says, ‘We’re right here, and we’re not going anywhere.’”

Jackson Women’s Health Services is the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, where the Republican-dominated state legislature and Republican Governor Phil Bryant have made it their avowed goal to make abortion impossible in their state. It’s a familiar scenario: The legislature passes, and the Governor signs, laws that put insurmountable hurdles in front of women’s health clinics that provide abortions. The main problem for Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the requirement that its doctors must have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

The difference between Mississippi’s laws and those in most other states is that, in Mississippi, they’ve put every abortion clinic other than Jackson Women’s Health out of business. Before the onerous restrictions on abortion clinics went into effect, Mississippi had 14 abortion clinics.

Ironically, Mississippi voters appear to have a different view of the kind of severe restrictions on abortion proposed by their legislature.   In November 2011, Mississippi voters defeated, by a margin of 52 to 47 percent,  a “personhood” amendment to their state constitution. The amendment would have defined “life” as beginning at the moment of fertilization,which would have effectively made all abortions illegal.

According to Clarion-Ledger. com:

Jackson Women’s Health Organization is currently awaiting word from  a federal judge on its request for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of the new state law. It requires all its physicians to have hospital admitting privileges, but the clinic hasn’t been able to obtain them despite a months-long effort.If the judge doesn’t grant the injunction, the state could be forced to close the clinic for non-compliance. Attorneys for the Jackson Women’s Health Organization say closure could come as early as March.

Not surprisingly, the pink paint job has infuriated anti-choice groups. For those who actually support respect for established law and a woman’s right to control her own reproductive system, the clinic’s new pink exterior is a welcome symbol of courage.

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