JACKSON, Miss. — Outside are protesters, praying or proffering pamphlets with grisly photos. Inside, women sit quietly in a room furnished with a TV set and a gumball machine, waiting for their appointments at Mississippi's only abortion clinic.
These are busy but worrisome days for the Jackson Women's Health Organization, which has added many clients since the other remaining clinic closed last summer. The clinic's staff and supporters know that their adversaries will try to shut them down, taking another step toward making legal abortions in the state virtually nonexistent.
For both sides in the national debate over abortion, Mississippi has become Exhibit A: It is widely considered the state with the most thorough arsenal of laws, policies and public pressure aimed at curtailing the procedure. There used to be seven abortion clinics in the state; now it is the most populous of a handful of states with only one.
"Mississippi is the picture of the future," said Susan Hill, a North Carolina-based businesswoman who owns several clinics, including the one in Jackson. "It's the perfect laboratory for any restriction. There's no way, politically, that it won't sail through the legislature."
Antiabortion activist Roy McMillan, who has been protesting outside Mississippi clinics for 25 years, is delighted that he no longer has to ponder which clinic to target. "Thankfully, we've arrived at a time I always wanted, when the women have to come through us," he said as he confronted clinic employees and patients on a recent weekday.
"I would love our state to be the first to be abortion-free," McMillan said. "The governor should send the Highway Patrol and the National Guard to close this clinic down."
Abortions reached a peak in Mississippi in 1991, when 8,814 were reported. The number dropped to 3,605 in 2002, the last year for which figures are available, less than one-third the national rate.
Many hard-to-measure factors may have contributed to the drop, such as more effective use of birth control or an upsurge of Mississippi women getting abortions in other states. But activists on both sides believe that the strict laws and community pressure have had a significant impact, along with efforts by antiabortion groups to publicize the checkered legal backgrounds of some abortion providers.
