Two Is The New One

Rachel Joy Larris

July 06, 2006

So far I've only managed to write about television and reproductive rights for this blog, and I'm already sick of one these topics—and it ain't  Jon Stewart . Once again we have an extreme anti-abortion group who has decided they are going to spend a week making everyone's lives hell at an abortion clinic. Once again, we have to call in the police, the courts and the counter-protestors to ensure that the clinic workers are safe (or at least as safe as they can be) and that women have access to the clinic with a legally-acceptable amount of harrassment. This scene keeps playing over and over again and I'm throughly sick of it. And of course it's the same group that always shows up to block clinic access, Operation Rescue (now called Operation Save America). Operation Save America has announced that it is going to spend next week trying to make Mississippi an "abortion-free state" which is easy enough to do because it only has one clinic to shut down.

Check out the message on their website regarding their Mississippi campaign:

The Gentle Revolution is making its way toward Jackson , Mississippi , this year, July 15-22, 2006. Pro-life leaders from across our nation will be joining us at the “last abortion mill” in the state of Mississippi. We will be storming the gates of hell in the strong Name of Jesus Christ. Little did any of us know, as we ran to the roar to help those devastated by Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi and Louisiana, that God was preparing us to return to Mississippi to deal with an even more deadly foe—Abortion!

I'm really not certain how much Operation Rescue actually, you know, helped anyone in the Gulf states after Katrina. Despite what help they claim they provided, they also say that Katrina was one of God's judgments because our nation has turned from Jesus Christ . I guess if you provide hot dogs with Bible tracts, that still counts as “helping.”

Regardless, Operation Save America's little campaign means everyone has to get back onto the dance floor to make sure that women in Mississippi have access to what should be their right: the ability to visit a health care provider in peace (the clinic provides more than just abortions). You know the drill: ugly placards, shouting people, even more shouting people, cops and politicians, with the media soaking it all up.

As tired as I am of it, each and everytime an extreme group decides they want "shut down" a clinic the reproductive rights side has to respond, because the only other options is to let our medical rights be decided by others. And of course there's always the specter of violence during these hoe-downs. As Max Blumenthal in The Nation notes:

The long, hot summer of 1992 marked the climax of antiabortion protests in Baton Rouge . Declaring a "Summer of Purpose," organizers from Operation Rescue came to town with the intent of shutting down the city's Delta Women's Clinic—a longtime target of antiabortion militants, who firebombed it in 1985. Operation Rescue shepherded hundreds of shock troops from local fundamentalist churches onto clinic property, where they staged daily protest vigils, confronted patients and occasionally engaged in violent acts.

Operation Rescue just had a recent success in shutting down another long-hated enemy, the Wichita clinic that was the target of its 1991 “Summer of Mercy.” The group bought the building that had been leased by Central Women's Services since 1983 and then evicted them . I imagine Operation Rescue must have felt like Wile E. Coyote who just caught the Road Runner. Their plan to end access to abortion services everywhere must have always felt so out of reach, just like that darned Road Runner! It's probably a shock when they seem so close to achieving their goal.

Mississippi seems to be getting a lot of attention because it has only one remaining abortion clinic in the state. It was even the focus of a particularly interesting PBS “Frontline” episode “The Last Abortion Clinic.”

But Mississippi isn't the only state with only one abortion provider. Both North Dakota and South Dakota  (the focus of the recent statewide abortion ban ) also only have one. And at least three other states, Kentucky , West Virginia and Wyoming have only two abortion providers.

I guess “one” is the magic number that makes a lack of access to abortion seem real, whereas if there are two abortion providers—even if they both exist in the same city, as they do in West Virginia—then the alarm level is only at orange and not red. And let's not forget that over a decade ago Mississippi used to have seven abortion providers across the state.  Seven!  That many clinics almost feels impossible to re-create these days when opening up a new clinic is akin to getting permission to build a nuclear power plant. 

In any case, there's a little contest going on to see which state is going to be the first to actually have no abortion providers—the caveat being that, in fact, in many states there are already no resident doctors who will perform abortions. The only reason some clinics stay open is because doctors will commute by plane several times a week or month. In South Dakota, for example, four doctors have been flying in for 10 years to make sure women have access to what should be their right to have—a private medical decision. Just think about how much you hate a long commute or business trip. Now, think about doing that for 10 years.

So the point is as Operation Save America is setting up the floor for all the usual partners to dance, (and NOW has its own schedule of events planned) in many ways they've already won. I bet they can just taste that roasted Road Runner.