Activists have spent their lives outside Mississippi's last abortion clinic, what's next?

Show Caption

JACKSON, Miss. – Carrying a Bible in one hand and a hat in the other on a hot summer day with temperatures hovering near 100 degrees, Coleman Boyd walked up and down in front of the parking lot of the Jackson Women's Health Organization.

"Jesus overcame your sin," Boyd said. "Jesus overcame death. Jesus even overcame wicked abortion."

Boyd was one of several anti-abortion protestors who were lined up on the sidewalk outside the clinic or huddled either in the small patch of grass across the street or around their cars. They yelled Bible verses through speakers and begged people not to go inside.

It could easily have been mistaken for almost any other day since the clinic opened in 1996. However, this was the day Roe v. Wade was overturned: Friday, June 24.

Dobbs decision: Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, eliminating constitutional right to abortion

What's next: Where the abortion fight goes from here: Roe overruled, but the battle will continue

The scene outside Mississippi's last abortion clinic that day featured two groups, familiar but at odds with each other. One side identified by their rainbow striped vests, while the other wielded Bibles and signs. Threats of damnation, accusations of evil and the shouting of expletives were common.

Only feet away from Boyd, a group of clinic escorts guarded patients who were pulling their cars into the small parking lot. At times the escorts used umbrellas to shield the patients as best they could from the shouts of Boyd and others.

The Jackson Women's Health Organization clinic, known as the Pink House, was ground zero in the fight over abortion access in Mississippi, long before it found its name attached to last week's Supreme Court decision. 

Many people on both sides of the debate have spent decades of their lives outside the clinic. The scene from the morning of the court's decision featured many of the same figures it did the day the clinic first opened in 1996.

Anti-abortion advocates E.C. Smith and Doug Lane were both there on the day the clinic opened and the day Roe v. Wade was overturned. Smith said he also was protesting in front of at least two other abortion providers in the area before Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Lane said after the clinic closes he will continue to advocate for anti-abortion causes.

"There are still places where this will be legal," Lane said.

Smith, a self-described "conservative Catholic priest," made a promise.

"I've been out here since the day it opened," Smith said. "I'll be here until the day it closes."

Mississippi's abortion ban trigger law is set to take effect as soon as July 7, in the wake of last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade. The clinic challenged the Mississippi law in 2018, asserting it conflicted with Roe v. Wade and a subsequent case in 1992 that upheld Roe.

Can HIPAA protect you?: What to know about medical privacy rights

'Celebrate' vs. 'dangerous': How campaigns are talking about Supreme Court abortion decision

The clinic is still seeing patients, and it has sued the state in a last-ditch effort to keep providing abortions, but even the Pink House's longtime supporters see the end quickly approaching on the horizon. In an email, clinic owner Diane Derzis referred to this period as "our final days."

On the day Roe v. Wade was overturned, patients slowly filed in and out of the clinic's doors, rarely looking up at the crowd on the street. Many, though not all, were there for an abortion — a medical procedure that about 1 in 4 American women undergo by the age of 45, according to a 2014 study.

Derenda Hancock is the longtime organizer of the Pink House Defenders, the group of escorts who make sure patients are able to enter and exit the clinic and its parking lot. Hancock spoke at a news conference outside of the Pink House hours after the Dobbs decision was announced, thanking the escorts she works with.

"These people have given their time and their energy for all these years selflessly, and now we're here to say goodbye," Hancock said. "We will be here in the parking lot until the Pink House closes its doors."

Anti-abortion advocate Laura Duran has been going to the Pink House for 10 years.

"I protest certain things, but I also counsel women that there's another option, a better option," Duran said.

When the Pink House closes, Duran said she will continue collecting donations for mothers who choose not to get an abortion.

"I'm going to do whatever the pro-life movement is doing," Duran said. 

A week before Roe v. Wade was struck down, Basil Chisholm was standing outside the clinic holding a sign. He also has been protesting at the Pink House since it first opened.

"I'm here to make sure people know what's happening in that clinic and at other places like it," Chisholm said.

For anti-abortion advocates, the message seemed consistent. Not being at the Pink House every day will allow them to push their anti-abortion message in other venues. Duran said she will shift her focus to getting that message into more churches and schools. 

"Now that we're not here every day, we're going to have more time to do it," Duran said.

What happens to IVF?: People struggling to conceive worry embryos are at risk

Internet resources: Need help getting an abortion? Social media flooded with resources after Roe reversal

Once the doors do close, the path forward for advocates of reproductive health care access seems less clear than that of those they've faced off against for nearly three decades.

Escorts said they would keep advocating however they could, but in Mississippi the nearest places with widespread abortion access will likely be hundreds of miles away in Illinois and North Carolina.

"There's always going to be work in this realm until there's equality in this country," clinic escort Kim Gibson said.

For the clinic itself, and some of those who have worked in it for decades, the future will not be in Jackson. At the news conference after Roe v. Wade fell, Derzis said the clinic is in the process of opening a new location in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which they are calling "Pink House West."

"The Pink House, while it's a wonderful building, it is just a building," Derzis said. "There will be pink houses all over the country if I have anything to say about it."

Derzis also thanked the Mississippians who had supported the clinic over the years.

"It has been such an honor and a privilege to be in Mississippi. We have grown to love this state and the people in it," Derzis said.

Executive Director of the Pink House Shannon Brewer spoke  at the news conference via video call. She struggled through tears and moments of anger as she thanked the escorts and staff who had spent so much of their time at the clinic.

"There are no words to thank y'all," Brewer said.

Derzis offered a message to those who gathered in front of the clinic on June 24.

"They won," she said.

In the end, if their legal challenges fall short, the Pink House in Jackson will close when the trigger law takes effect and abortion becomes illegal in Mississippi.

Dozens of people who have spent a significant portion of their lives standing in a parking lot, pacing up and down a sidewalk and huddling in the few shady patches of grass will walk away for the last time.

The corner may then become the quietest it has been in 26 years, as the last abortion clinic in Mississippi shuts its doors for good.

Contributing: John Fritze, Paste BN. Follow Wicker Perlis on Twitter: @WickerPerlis