Dear John,
The last standing abortion clinic in Mississippi has closed its doors.
On Thursday, the Mississippi trigger law banning abortion went into effect following the Supreme Court’s ruling, overturning Roe v. Wade. The Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the clinic at the center of the Dobbs case — has finally been forced to shut down.
As they left for the afternoon, volunteer clinic escorts who had defended the clinic from anti-abortion protesters’ threats and harassment over the years left signs against the clinic’s iron fence, thanking the Pink House and its hardworking clinicians. “For 27 years you were the light at the end of the tunnel,” one of them read. “It’s dark right now, but the fire is still burning.”
As the effects of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization continue to reverberate this week, the situation is changing daily state by state. Advocates are relentlessly fighting back against the trigger laws and cruel abortion bans enacted in Republican controlled states across the country. Clinics and their lawyers are challenging the bans in state courts as violations of state constitutions’ privacy and liberty guarantees, with some early successes; in both Louisiana and Kentucky, district court judges have issued temporary restraining orders preventing the enforcement of the states’ bans. The ultimate disposition of these cases will not be known for some time.
And Friday, President Biden issued a broad and comprehensive executive order “Protecting Access to Reproductive Healthcare Services” that covers all “medical, surgical, counseling, or referral services … including services relating to pregnancy or the termination of a pregnancy.” The order covers actions to protect access to all reproductive health services; ensure the privacy, safety and security of patients, providers and third parties; and sets up an Interagency Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access including the Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Director of the White House Gender Policy Council and other agencies. Additionally, the Attorney General is instructed to provide assistance to states seeking to afford “legal protection to out-of-State patients and providers who offer legal reproductive healthcare.”
You can count on Ms. to keep you updated on the status of abortion rights in all 50 states — head to msmagazine.com to see our state-by-state tracker.
This past Wednesday, we joined our colleagues at UC Irvine School of Law to reflect on a Supreme Court term that has been shocking, to put it lightly. Our panel of law professors and experts, moderated by our own Dr. Michele B. Goodwin, sounded the alarm — warning that the Court will not stop at just Roe, and that no precedent is safe. UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky summed it up by saying that the Court’s conservative supermajority is “just getting started.”
“The writing has been on the wall for a long time,” Chemerinksy said. “This term was in one sense not a surprise, but it was shocking to see decision after decision come down in a conservative way.”
Legal scholar and author Mary Anne Franks also pointed out that the Court’s rulings in cases like Dobbs and Bruen (the case citing the right to self-defense that struck down a New York gun control law) plainly show who the conservative justices consider deserving — or undeserving — of fundamental constitutional rights. “For so many women, especially Black women, pregnancy is life-threatening. But women don’t have that right [to self-defense] at all… the Court is signaling more than ever before who counts and who doesn’t,” she said. “It needs to be clear that the Court is saying who lives, who dies, who gets to defend themselves, who doesn’t.”
The Court’s cruelty may be unprecedented — but we’re not giving up. You can count on us to keep you informed in the days and months ahead. We’ll be fighting back with you.
