Subscribe to Receive the Daily Report

Friday, February 14th, 2020

When Choice is 221 Miles Away: The Nightmare of Getting an Abortion in the South

Author:     BECCA ANDREWS
Source:     Mother Jones
Publication Date:    
Link: When Choice is 221 Miles Away: The Nightmare of Getting an Abortion in the South
Stephan:   The deep south states of the old Confederacy controlled by racist Trumplicans by every social outcome measure are falling further and further behind the Democratically controlled Blue states. More and more Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana look like third world countries with Neo-feudalist plantation economies; a few affluent White people in control, masses of Black and Brown peasants in or near poverty, and a tiny middle class, the only demographic made up of all races. Nowhere is this clearer than in the abortion fight. Here is the sad truth.

Kate at Home Credit: Mother Jones

“I would drink bleach right now.”

Kate shakes her head, and her long, sun-streaked brown hair, piled high in a messy bun, shivers. “That’s so bad, and I don’t mean it,” she quickly adds.

She’s exhausted; shadowy crescents frame her bright eyes. Just a few weeks ago, she graduated from the University of Mississippi. “My one goal, as pathetic as it sounds, was do not walk across that stage pregnant,” she says. “Everything I worked for…I’m going to remember graduating and being pregnant.” Kate has been trying to get an abortion since March. It’s a Friday evening at the end of May, and she was just turned away from an Arkansas clinic, about 200 miles from home.

In the morning, she’ll have to go back home to Oxford, Mississippi, where she’ll wait yet another week, and return to the clinic in Little Rock for the third and hopefully final time.

Her day began at 3 a.m., with a text from Laurie Bertram Roberts. Roberts helms the Mississippi Reproductive […]

Read the Full Article