By Bracey HarrisNBC
News
JACKSON, Mississippi — As the sun set around 2:15 pm Wednesday, Dale Gibson began tacking signs to the iron fence surrounding Mississippi's only abortion clinic.
"The fight is not over," said one.
In italics, another promised: "This is not the end."
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Wednesday was the last day the Jackson Women's Health Organization was legally allowed to perform abortions in Mississippi.
It was the last day that Gibson and his fellow volunteer patient escorts gathered outside the clinic to defend a right that no longer exists in much of the country.
For years, the volunteers - known as the Defenders of the Pink House, a nickname derived from the tone of the building's flamingos - have played music to drown out the screams of protesters trying to dissuade patients from entering.
Now there was silence.
Before turning to leave the clinic, Gibson said he was "still a little numb."
His emotions had gone in circles: "From rage to despair, from shit to despair," he explained.
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Mississippi on Thursday becomes the latest in a growing number of Southern states where nearly all abortion care is banned after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v.
Wade.
Mississippi's activation law gave the Jackson Women's Health Organization 10 days to continue operations after state Attorney General Lynn Fitch certified the Supreme Court ruling.
As of now, the only exceptions to the ban are if a patient's life is in danger or if a patient was raped and reported the assault to law enforcement.
Dr. Cheryl Hamlin hugs Kim Gibson, co-founder of The Pink House Defenders and clinic companion, at the Jackson Womens Health Organization, known as The Pink House, in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 7, 2022. Erin Clark/Boston Globe via Getty Images
For years, the clinic known locally as the Casa Rosa has resisted a wave of laws designed to prevent its operation.
Now, Diane Derzis, owner of the clinic, has finally decided to close its doors.
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On Wednesday, he met with the director of the clinic and offered a message of support.
He did not give the number of patients who received care in the last hours, but said that in the last few days there had been "a lot".
Since the Supreme Court ruling, the Casa Rosada has been open every day it can, according to Derzis.
“I wish it was longer.
But it is what it is,” she lamented.
The clinic hopes that a few final patients will be able to come in for follow-up visits on Thursday, before the Casa Rosa closes for good.
Derzis plans to open a new Pink House in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
He hopes to start seeing patients there in about two weeks.
“The Pink House is just a building.
It's underway,” he stated.
Dr. Cheryl Hamlin is following the Casa Rosa to New Mexico — but she worries that many of the women who sought abortion care at the Jackson clinic may not be able to do the same.
Hamlin, who lives in Massachusetts, is one of the doctors who rotates at the Casa Rosada.
He stayed at the clinic until Tuesday night reviewing patient charts, then returned early Wednesday for the final procedures.
She fears the decline in abortion rights, coupled with a shortage of health care in Mississippi's poorest rural communities, will cost lives.
In the state's economically disadvantaged communities, researchers have documented poor access to OB-GYNs.
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In 2019, 23-year-old Shyteria Shoemaker died after her family frantically tried to get her care when she became short of breath.
The hospital just minutes from her house had closed her emergency room about five years ago.
The county ambulance service, under great pressure, took nearly 30 minutes to arrive.
Dale Gibson places a sign on the iron fence surrounding the Jackson Women's Health Organization on Wednesday. Bracey Harris/NBC News
Shoemaker, who was pregnant, was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a neighboring county hospital.
“No one takes care of them,” Hamlin said of the women living in Mississippi's sanitary deserts.
"These are people who are trying ... but they are really poor, and they don't have options," she lamented.
On Wednesday morning, Derenda Hancock, co-founder of We Engage, the nonprofit group that organizes the Pink House Defenders, arrived at the clinic door wearing a straw hat adorned with a green scarf.
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For nearly a decade, she has faced mobs of abortion opponents, some of them hostile, others calmly holding up pamphlets.
Like her, they rarely missed a clinic opening day.
Hancock's voice was steady, betraying little of what he knew he was going to feel for the next few hours.
“I'm sure at the end of the day I won't be able to take much more.
You have to get over it before you lose it,” she noted.
Later Wednesday morning, David Lane, an anti-abortion rights protester, followed his younger brother, Doug, to the front of the clinic, where Doug began yelling.
A group of people carrying signs supporting abortion rights started playing kazoos [a musical instrument] to drown out Doug's screams.
A security guard stood between the men and abortion rights supporters.
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The Lanes are among the crowd of protesters that have gathered outside the clinic over the years.
“Everyone expects us to be euphoric.
What we are very grateful for,” David Lane said later in an interview.
But he expressed doubt that Wednesday would be the final chapter in the fight for abortion rights in Mississippi, and in the country.
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“The Government gave us Roe in 1973. The Government took it away from us in 22. What will prevent it from returning it to us in 26?
Nothing,” he opined.
Lane noted that the Supreme Court ruling has not led to a ban on abortion in states like North Carolina, where she plans to travel soon.
Closer to home, she hopes organizations like Pro-Life Mississippi will organize support for residents with few options to end their pregnancies.
["It's a brick wall." The end of the protection of the right to abortion will be "horrible" for women in prison]
In the middle of the afternoon, after Gibson had hung the posters that the Defenders of the Casa Rosada had made on the outside fence, the group of volunteers stood looking up, taking a few last photos and saying goodbye.
Hancock hugged a young defender wearing a baseball cap, and then they turned and started to walk away.
Gibson, 53, was considering his steps in fighting for protections he worried would be next to fall, like transgender rights and gay rights.
Birth control, he thought, would also likely be attacked.
"They want to take everything back to the 1900s," he denounced.
For now, he was leaving the clinic and going home to smoke a piece of brisket.
In the near future, he plans to move with his wife, Kim Gibson, another co-founder of We Engage, to California, where "there is something like the Constitution," he explained.