Mississippi May Lose Its Only Abortion Clinic

Swell:

Mississippi's governor, Phil Bryant, signed an anti-abortion law on Monday that could effectively shut down the state's only abortion clinic. The law, House Bill 1390, puts new restrictions on doctors who provide abortions and the facilities in which abortions are performed. The law requires doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and they must be board certified OB-GYNs.

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards condemned the law as an attempt to overturn Roe, saying, "Make no mistake, this law is based on a political agenda, not medical necessity. In yet another shortsighted attempt to ban abortion in Mississippi, Governor Bryant and lawmakers are putting their ideology above the health and safety of Mississippi women. This law is bad policy and endangers women's health."

This is the same sort of goalpost-moving shit that anti-choicers have pulled (or tried to pull) in Virginia (see also), Kansas (see also), and elsewhere.

These are what's called "supply-side abortion restrictions," targeting physicians, hospitals, and clinics in order to prevent them from being able to meet the legal requirements to perform abortions, because "demand-side abortion restrictions," targeting abortion-seeking women and other people with uteri, don't work, since pregnant people who don't want to be pregnant will find a way to not be pregnant.

Even shutting down abortion clinics will not stop terminations, though. (Recommended Reading: Jennie McCormack's Abortion Battle.) We know for a fact that criminalizing or denying access to legal abortion will simply drive abortions underground, make them less safe, result in more injury, sterilization, and death, and delay abortions until later in pregnancy.

The anti-choice brigade's resistance to internalizing and/or respecting these facts is hostile, cruel, irresponsible, and dangerous.

Restricting abortion is so inconsistent with any reasonable definition of "pro-life" that their chosen moniker would be laughable, if only their agency-averse movement weren't so comprehensively detestable.