Clinic at epicenter of SCOTUS abortion case stays open

As the US Supreme Court heard a Mississippi case 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.

In recent years, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization saw patients two or three days a week. But it 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 on December 1 was 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 President Trump—to use the case to overturn Roe v. Wade, the court’s 1973 ruling that declared a nationwide right to abortion.