The parents of a teenage Mississippi rape victim had to travel more than 500 miles to help their daughter obtain an abortion in Illinois, WAPT’s Megan West reported. The family told the local Jackson anchor that they learned their daughter was pregnant three days beyond Mississippi’s legal limit of six weeks.
Three years after blocking Mississippi’s six-week abortion ban, a federal judge allowed it to become effective Wednesday, citing the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, filed a petition asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to allow it to resume providing abortions. The clinic closed today as the state’s Roe v. Wade trigger law, which bans nearly all abortions, took effect.
Wednesday will be the last day the Jackson Women’s Health Organization can provide abortions after a state court declined to block a near-total abortion ban from going into effect in two days.
Mississippi’s only abortion clinic could be forced to cease operations in two days unless a judge agrees to block a near-total abortion ban from taking effect. In Hinds County Chancery Court this morning, an attorney for the Jackson Women’s Health Organization argued that the Mississippi State Constitution protects the right to abortion and asked Judge Debbra K. Halford to block the ban’s enforcement.
The Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, filed a lawsuit asking the Hinds County Chancery Court to block the State from enforcing a near-total abortion ban in the form of a trigger law.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade this morning, paving the way for states like Mississippi to restrict abortion access to a greater extent than any time in the last half century. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization immediately allows Mississippi’s ban on nearly all abortions after 15 weeks to go into effect.
Pink House Defender Derenda Hancock felt numb as she stood outside the entrance to the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, waving her arms to beckon abortion patients to ignore the anti-abortion protesters accosting their cars and pull on into the parking lot. The night before, on Monday, May 2, a draft of the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization had leaked, indicating the U.S. Supreme Court’s intentions to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the precedent that has underpinned abortion rights in the United States for 49 years, according to a leaked draft of a ruling Politico reported this evening.
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