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Millions of Women Already Live in a Post-Roe America: A Journey Through the Anti-Abortion South
Currently, there are 20 states poised to outlaw abortion if given the opportunity, which would impact more than 25 million women of child-bearing age — and disproportionately poor and minority women.
I met Danielle in the counseling room of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi, which sits on a busy corner in the city’s arts district. Its vibrant pink paint job has earned it the name “the Pink House,” and it is the state’s only remaining abortion clinic.
Dressed in gray sweatpants and a T-shirt, Danielle looked pensive as she sat in a narrow room in the back of the building alongside 12 other women there for abortion care. Betty Thompson, a counselor who has worked at the clinic for 24 years, stood before the women, ready to walk them through the necessary paperwork and go over next steps.
Twenty four years old with two young children, Danielle had just found out she was pregnant again. She had a fling with a co-worker, only to learn that he had sabotaged the condom they used. She was now four weeks pregnant. After weighing her options, she decided to terminate her pregnancy. She’d become pregnant via deception, she thought, and that didn’t exactly suggest stability on the part of the man she would be bound to if she were to carry the pregnancy to term. But more importantly, she told me that she just wasn’t in a position to have another child. A single mom, she takes pains to ensure that her two kids, ages 4 and 2, have everything they need to thrive. It’s a struggle and a lot of responsibility, and she didn’t think it would be fair to anyone to bring another child into the mix. “I got my kids in a place where they can take piano lessons and they can take swimming lessons; they’re having a great life,” she said. “I would feel like a bad mom if I couldn’t do that for them. So I don’t regret doing this now. And every woman should have a choice with her body, what to do with her body.”
On August 7, Danielle boarded a Greyhound bus for the three-hour trip to Jackson. She left the kids with their grandmother, and she packed a duffle bag because she’d be gone at least three days — Mississippi law requires abortion patients to have an initial visit in which they’re counseled on the choice they’re making, and then a second appointment for the abortion itself. In between is a state-mandated 24-hour waiting period, allegedly necessary to allow the patient extra time to wrestle with the gravity of her decision.
This meant that in addition to the bus fare and the $450 she needed to pay for the abortion, she would also have to come up with money for a hotel, meals, and cab rides back and forth to the clinic, all of which posed a significant burden, especially since Danielle was between jobs. By the time she left Jackson three days later, Danielle estimated that she would have less than $30 to cover family expenses for the rest of the month.
https://portside.org/2019-02-04/millions-women-already-live-post-roe-america-journey-through-anti-abortion-south
I met Danielle in the counseling room of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi, which sits on a busy corner in the city’s arts district. Its vibrant pink paint job has earned it the name “the Pink House,” and it is the state’s only remaining abortion clinic.
Dressed in gray sweatpants and a T-shirt, Danielle looked pensive as she sat in a narrow room in the back of the building alongside 12 other women there for abortion care. Betty Thompson, a counselor who has worked at the clinic for 24 years, stood before the women, ready to walk them through the necessary paperwork and go over next steps.
Twenty four years old with two young children, Danielle had just found out she was pregnant again. She had a fling with a co-worker, only to learn that he had sabotaged the condom they used. She was now four weeks pregnant. After weighing her options, she decided to terminate her pregnancy. She’d become pregnant via deception, she thought, and that didn’t exactly suggest stability on the part of the man she would be bound to if she were to carry the pregnancy to term. But more importantly, she told me that she just wasn’t in a position to have another child. A single mom, she takes pains to ensure that her two kids, ages 4 and 2, have everything they need to thrive. It’s a struggle and a lot of responsibility, and she didn’t think it would be fair to anyone to bring another child into the mix. “I got my kids in a place where they can take piano lessons and they can take swimming lessons; they’re having a great life,” she said. “I would feel like a bad mom if I couldn’t do that for them. So I don’t regret doing this now. And every woman should have a choice with her body, what to do with her body.”
On August 7, Danielle boarded a Greyhound bus for the three-hour trip to Jackson. She left the kids with their grandmother, and she packed a duffle bag because she’d be gone at least three days — Mississippi law requires abortion patients to have an initial visit in which they’re counseled on the choice they’re making, and then a second appointment for the abortion itself. In between is a state-mandated 24-hour waiting period, allegedly necessary to allow the patient extra time to wrestle with the gravity of her decision.
This meant that in addition to the bus fare and the $450 she needed to pay for the abortion, she would also have to come up with money for a hotel, meals, and cab rides back and forth to the clinic, all of which posed a significant burden, especially since Danielle was between jobs. By the time she left Jackson three days later, Danielle estimated that she would have less than $30 to cover family expenses for the rest of the month.
https://portside.org/2019-02-04/millions-women-already-live-post-roe-america-journey-through-anti-abortion-south
