Fighting for Reproductive Rights in Mississippi

Fighting for Reproductive Rights in Mississippi
By Sarah Olson
Truthout | Report

Monday 24 July 2006

Betty Thompson grew up poor in rural Mississippi. She says being poor was so common that she never really understood that her family lacked financial resources. When she became pregnant at age 16 in 1964, she didn’t know anything about birth control, had never had a sex education class. Even though abortion was illegal at that time, she didn’t know about abortion either. She simply didn’t understand that she had choices or options about her reproductive future. She says now that had she had options then, she’s sure she would have had an abortion. It was a hard time to be a teen mother, Thompson says. “I was ostracized. I was not allowed to attend public school. Parents kept their daughters and friends away from me. So it was just me.”

Despite these hardships, Thompson finished high school, went to college, and emerged with two masters degrees. These life experiences created a wealth of empathy in Thompson that led her to be a counselor and an administrator at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s last abortion clinic. It’s also these life experiences that cause her to fear that Mississippi, and much of the rest of the country, is entering an era where women – through lack of a comprehensive sex education, birth control, economic resources and abortion access – are not afforded meaningful choices about their reproductive options.

The Jackson Women’s Health Organization is an unassuming white building perched atop a slight hill in Jackson’s Fondran district. It overlooks a quaint shopping district in the front and is otherwise surrounded by residential homes. It’s the site of at least two major anti-abortion protests each year and small demonstrations that occur almost weekly. To hear Thompson tell it Jackson, Mississippi, has landed smack in the middle of the anti-abortion protest circuit, with groups from around the country coming to Jackson each year – praying, proselytizing, and demanding that Jackson shut down its remaining abortion clinic and repent for its sins.

This past week, Jackson played host to Operation Save America, formerly Operation Rescue. Operation Save America seeks to save the “pre-born” in the name of Jesus. Its mission statement says: “We believe that Jesus Christ is the only answer to the abortion holocaust. It is upon our active repentance in the streets of our cities that the Gospel is visibly lived out. We become to the church, to our city, and to our nation living parables which rightly represent God’s heart toward His helpless children.” In what is now common anti-abortion rhetoric, Operation Save America also compares its struggle to end abortion to the previous national efforts to end slavery. “There are no cheap political solutions to the holocaust presently ravaging our nation. Like slavery before it, abortion is pre-eminently a Gospel issue. The Cross of Christ is the only solution.” In Jackson for the week of July 15th through the 22nd, Operation Save America held daily vigils at the Jackson
Women’s Health Organization where it surrounded the clinic with signs, scripture, and 6-foot by 8-foot photos of allegedly aborted fetuses. In addition, members of Operation Save America signed an emancipation proclamation and a held a memorial service for the unborn. They held all-night vigils in front of the abortion clinic reading aloud from the bible. They also burned various Supreme Court decisions, a gay pride flag and a Quran. This last act got them kicked out of their local headquarters, the Making Jesus Real Church in Pearl, Mississippi.

Operation Save America has identified a whole host of things they call offensive to God. Their director, Pastor Phillip “Flip” Benham, told his congregation they had three choices with Muslims: kill them, be killed by them, or convert them. “Which is your choice?” he asked. “While not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists are Muslims,” he said. “We destroy the Quran, not to desecrate their religion, but to set them free.

Pastor Flip has a special disdain for feminists as well. “Feminism is rebellion against God,” he says. “They hate men. Gloria Steinem said, ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.’ That’ll help you to understand what feminists think of men.” Pastor Flip believes feminists are angry, ugly white women who, for the most part, have been unable to find a male partner. And as they eschew having children, he says, they condemn themselves to a lonely and unhappy life, striving continually to be something they cannot be: men. “There is not a greater vocation in the world for a woman than to be a mother,” says Pastor Flip.

Operation Save America’s aggressive and often bizarre tactics put them on the fringe of the anti-choice movement and have alienated them from the majority of the Jackson community. Polls have shown that most Mississippians, while often not supporting abortion, don’t condone Operation Save America’s stentorian street theater or their threatening behavior toward clinics, staff members and patients. With such a response in Jackson, what does Operation Save America hope to accomplish? In fact, what can they accomplish? Even though each member of Operation Save America attending protests in Jackson was required to sign a pledge of nonviolence (the group calls itself the “gentle revolution”), it’s clear that one of the most powerful tools in the group’s arsenal is the threat of violent and intimidating protest.

All this is tough on the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “It has not been easy,” says McCoy Faulkner, who is a retired cop and a private security guard. He’s been doing security for abortion clinics and women’s organizations for over 20 years, and during that time, he says, he’s seen it all. Each day he picks up the clinic staff at a new location, decided upon the night before, and drives them into the clinic. When their job has finished, he drives the staff back to their cars. In addition, staff and patients alike have been given information about how to avoid being followed and to retain their privacy.

This week Faulkner says, fewer patients have attended the clinic, although it has remained open. Another of his concerns is that Operation Save America has been allowed to take its demonstrations into the residential neighborhoods behind the clinic. They were also allowed to leaflet the neighborhood where the clinic’s abortion provider lives. Faulkner says by and large the community has been incredibly supportive of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but he knows these types of relentless demonstrations take their toll.

“I think the atmosphere for everyone involved has been one of courage,” says the Jackson Women’s Health Organization’s Betty Thompson. “Once they get inside the clinic, the staff is prepared and have been trained to give patients some comfort. They put them at ease and make them comfortable. The patients know they are protected, as much as possible.” Thompson says she’s proud of everyone involved in the process.

But Operation Save America was not the only group in town last week. A group of local pro-choice activists banded together to form the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Coalition, and women from around the country flocked to Mississippi to join them in a week of pro-choice education and activism. “A lot of heart and hard work has gone into this week,” says Michelle Colon, president of the Jackson area National Organization for Women. “We do this because we are not afraid. We understand the obstacles that face Mississippi women. We understand the barriers that prevent women from accessing abortion services, and we also understand the obstacles that push women into deciding to have an abortion.”

The Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Coalition came together informally in March of 2006 when Senate Bill 2922 banning abortion in all cases except rape, incest, and when the mother’s life is endangered passed the Mississippi House by a 94 to 25 vote margin. Initial versions of the bill also proposed requiring the rare woman who does qualify to have an abortion to view an ultrasound and to listen to the fetal heart beat before going ahead with the procedure. “A small group of women of color came together earlier this year,” says Colon. “And for a whole month, we outnumbered to anti-choice representatives here in Jackson.” This is an unprecedented victory for the pro-choice movement in historically anti-abortion Mississippi.

Activists from the National Organization for Women, Radical Women, the Feminist Majority, The World Can’t Wait and many other groups spent the week in Jackson supporting the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, canvassing in communities around Jackson and educating the public about reproductive health and birth control. “Women’s reproductive rights are under attack,” said one flier distributed door to door in communities throughout Jackson. “If you believe that all women should have access to comprehensive reproductive health care, join us at the capitol building.”

Many see Mississippi as a battleground state, possibly even a state where the battle has already been lost. It’s a conservative red state with some of the toughest restrictions on abortion in the country. Many Mississippi activists say national pro-choice organizations have typically left Mississippi out of their planning. Colon says she worked hard to get the National Organization of Women to pay attention to Mississippi’s reproductive health policies.

A woman seeking an abortion in Mississippi must receive counseling by a physician 24 hours before having the abortion performed. This counseling must include statements about the medically inaccurate link between abortion and breast cancer. A physician must also advise a woman seeking an abortion of the health risks of having an abortion. A minor seeking an abortion must have the consent of both parents. If a clinic wants to perform abortions after 13 weeks of pregnancy, it must be licensed as an ambulatory surgical center, opening itself up to a whole host of restrictions, regulations and requirements. Public funding for abortions is available only in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, there has been rape or incest, or there is fetal abnormality. Insurance policies for public employees provide coverage for abortions only in the above situations.

While there may be enough pro-choice support in Mississippi to defeat an abortion ban, those in power are dedicated to banning or reducing access to abortions in Mississippi. Governor Haley Barbour has said repeatedly that he would be willing to sign an abortion ban should one come to his desk. He says he prefers that the ban have an exception for rape, incest and the life of the mother, as he believes this is what the majority of Mississippians and Americans want. Barbour also authored a resolution declaring that the anniversary of the passage of Roe vs. Wade be turned into an official prayer week to remember the sanctity of human life. He authorized turning the Capitol Building lawn into a tiny graveyard with the placement of small white crosses “in memory of the unborn children who die each day in America.”

So the question is: What is at stake for women in Mississippi, and in some ways, what is at stake for women in the United States? What impact do these protests have on the real lives of women in Mississippi? What kind of reproductive health care do women in Mississippi have access to? What kind of sex education do young people receive in schools? What are the options for poor mothers who decide to carry their children to term? What kind of options are there for infants, after they have been born? Do pregnant mothers have job security, food security, access to child care, and quality education for their children? How easy is it to make meaningful reproductive decisions in Mississippi, or around the country for that matter? As many women point out, the list of concerns women have when they find out they are pregnant neither begins nor ends with abortion.

In some ways, the policies speak for themselves. In addition to policies restricting abortion access, women in Mississippi have trouble getting access to a whole host of reproductive health care needs. According to the Guttmacher Institute, insurance companies are not required to pay for contraceptives. Pharmacies are allowed to refuse to dispense birth control. Of the 20 pharmacies advocates polled last week in Jackson, only two of them stocked emergency contraception. Sexually active minors must be married, have their parents’ permission, or get a doctor’s referral before they can obtain birth control. As a matter of policy, abstinence education is stressed not only in high school sex education programs, but also in STD and HIV education programs. And as a matter of policy, contraception is not covered in these programs.

The numbers, of course, reflect these policies. Abortions in Mississippi reached their peak in 1991, when 8,814 were reported, according to the Associated Press. By 2002, the number had dropped to 3,605, giving the state one of the lowest abortion rates in the nation. At the same time, legal, financial and medical factors are often forcing women into having an abortion after the first trimester. A study by Family Planning Perspectives in 2000 indicates that after Mississippi passed its 24-hour waiting period, the number of second trimester abortions increased by 53 percent. Clinic closures and other restrictions placed on Mississippi since 2000 have doubtless added to this increase.

Mississippi received over 1.5 million dollars in federal funding for its abstinence-only sex education programs. And yet, according to the Center for Disease Control, more young people were having sex sooner in Mississippi. And in 2001, Mississippi’s birth rate was 67 per 1,000 women ages 15-19 compared to a teen birth rate of 45 per 1,000 nationwide.

But what women in Mississippi repeatedly say is that for them the issue isn’t about belief: being pro-choice or pro-life. It isn’t about being a feminist or organizing huge demonstrations to support a political cause. It is about paying attention to, taking care of and honoring the hearts, minds and bodies of women in Mississippi. And this means a whole lot more than simply protesting against organizations like Operation Save America. It means that women and organizations around the country must make a concerted and long-term effort working with women in Mississippi to improve the living conditions, economic stability, access to education and reproductive health of Mississippi women.