The Mississippi’s Jackson Women’s Health Organization clinic that was at the heart of June’s landmark abortion ruling by the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade has been sold, its owner informed the public, stressing that it will not reopen even if it’s allowed to do so by a Mississippi state court.
Best known as the Pink House, it was Mississippi’s last abortion clinic, but it shut its doors for the last time earlier this month after it lost its bid to temporarily block Mississippi’s trigger law that bans most abortions from going into effect.
The owner of the clinic, Diane Derzis, informed that she has moved all the furniture and equipment from Jackson Women’s Health Organization to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where she plans to open a new abortion clinic soon.
She said that she started receiving buying calls for the building the minute the Supreme Court released its June 24 ruling that took away women’s constitutional protection for abortion nationwide by overturning the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
The clinic stopped offering medication and surgical abortions a day before the state enacted a trigger law- contingent on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade – that bans most abortions.
Passed in 2007, the Mississippi trigger law only permits abortion if the pregnant woman’s life is in danger or if a pregnancy is caused by a rape reported to law enforcement but does not have an exception for pregnancies caused by incest.
Back in 2018, Mississippi – one of several states with a trigger law – enacted a law that bans abortion after 15 weeks, prompting a lawsuit from the Jackson clinic and one of its doctors which claimed the law was unconstitutional, but the US Supreme Court ultimately declared there is no constitutional right to an abortion.
The Pink House’s legal battle in Mississippi is still ongoing since the clinic appealed to the state Supreme Court the state court judge’s ruling rejecting its request to block the trigger law from taking effect.
The state attorneys were given a deadline to respond to the clinic’s appeal by July 25.
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