We are writing to update you on the day to day struggle to keep the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, open and its doctors and workers safe. We are making progress, but we still need your help.
Last week, we told you of the imperative need to improve the clinic’s security system to help prevent invasions – the clinic had just been invaded by a anti-abortion extremist who got as far as the waiting room before being stopped. That won’t happen again.
Thanks to the generosity of many of you, we were able to fund improvements to clinics security system to stop hostile intruders. Believe me the clinic administrators, staff, and doctors are very grateful. But we must do more.
Everyday, the leading anti-abortion extremist in Jackson, who is an advocate of Justifiable Homicide – or the belief that justifies the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The clinic and its doctors have been repeatedly threatened.
The women’s health care provider and its doctors and staff need our help now. The clinic needs immediate help to pursue legal strategies and to make additional enhancements to its security system.
Our National Clinic Access Project legal coordinator has traveled to Jackson to assist the clinic. She met with clinic staff and community pro-choice supporters to discuss ways to improve security, to assess legal needs and to devise new ways for the local community to support this critically needed health facility. Our legal team is now working to retain legal council. We are determined to do everything we can to keep Jackson Women’s Health Organization open and its patients, doctors, and staff safe.
Please help the doctors, health care workers, and patients of Jackson Women’s Health Organization today by making an emergency, tax-deductible contribution. Half your contribution will go directly to the clinic to help pay for upgraded and additional enhanced security measures.
The other half of your emergency contribution will help support our National Clinic Access Project’s work to keep this clinic and other besieged clinics across the country safe and open. The demand for our work is dramatically increasing.
Our project is also working with Dr. Carhart and his clinic in Nebraska. Dr. Carhart, who had worked with Dr. Tiller, and his clinic were immediately targeted for closing by Wichita-based Operation Rescue after the murder of Dr. Tiller. This group had harassed Dr. Tiller for seven years.
And we are also working very closely with Family Reproductive Health in Charlotte, NC under siege by Operation Save America/Operation Rescue. Recently, anti-abortion extremists published the photographs of and information about the clinic’s doctors in a WANTED poster. Similar posters appeared before the brutal murders of two doctors in Pensacola, Florida.
Without doctors and clinics to provide safe, legal abortions and access to birth control, there can be no choice for women. Please make an emergency contribution today to help Jackson Women’s Health Organization and our National Clinic Access Project.
Together we are making a difference.
