JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – As the U.S. Supreme Court hears a Mississippi case Wednesday that could topple abortion rights nationwide, the state’s only abortion clinic was busier than ever: Volunteers continued to escort patients into the bright pink building while protesters outside beseeched women not to end their pregnancies.
The Jackson Women’s Health Organization saw patients two or three days a week in recent years, but has doubled its hours to treat women from Texas, where a law took effect in early September banning most abortions at about six weeks, and from Louisiana, where clinics are filling with Texas patients.
The case being argued before the nation’s high court is about a 2018 Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The state’s Republican attorney general is asking the court – remade with three conservative justices nominated by former President Donald Trump – to use the case to overturn Roe v. Wade, the court’s 1973 ruling that declared a nationwide right to abortion.
The Supreme Court has never allowed states to ban abortion before viability, the point at roughly 24 weeks when a fetus can survive outside the womb.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the court early Wednesday, their opposing positions marked by signs that included “Her Body Her Choice” and “God Hates the Shedding of Innocent Blood.”