- Climate change made deadly Hurricane Helene more intense: study
- A US climate scientist sees hurricane Helene's devastation firsthand
- Padres edge Dodgers, Mets on the brink
- Can carbon credits help close coal plants?
- With EU funding, Tunisian farmer revives parched village
- Sega ninja game 'Shinobi' gets movie treatment
- Boeing suspends negotiations with striking workers
- 7-Eleven owner's shares spike on report of new buyout offer
- Your 'local everything': what 7-Eleven buyout battle means for Japan
- Three million UK children living below poverty line: study
- China's Jia brings film spanning love, change over decades to Busan
- Paying out disaster relief before climate catastrophe strikes
- Chinese shares drop on stimulus upset, Asia tracks Wall St higher
- SE Asian summit seeks progress on Myanmar civil war
- How climate funds helped Peru's women beekeepers stay afloat
- Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded as wars rage
- Pacific island nations swamped by global drug trade
- AI-aided research, new materials eyed for Nobel Chemistry Prize
- Mozambique elects new president in tense vote
- The US economy is solid: Why are voters gloomy?
- Balkan summit to rally support for struggling Ukraine
- New stadium gives Real Madrid a headache
- Alonso, Manaea shine as 'Miracle Mets' blitz Phillies
- Harris, Trump trade blows in US election media blitz
- Harry's Bar in Paris drinks to US straw-poll centenary
- Osama bin Laden's son Omar banned from returning to France
- Afghan man arrested for plotting US election day attack
- Brazil lifts ban on Musk's X, ending standoff over disinformation
- Harris holds slight edge nationally over Trump: poll
- Chelsea edge Real Madrid in Women's Champions League, Lyon win
- Japan PM to dissolve parliament for 'honeymoon' snap election
- 'Diego Lives': Immersive Maradona exhibit hits Barcelona
- Brazil Supreme Court lifts ban on Musk's X
- Scientists sound AI alarm after winning physics Nobel
- Six-year-old girl among missing after Brazil landslide
- Nobel-winning physicist 'unnerved' by AI technology he helped create
- Mexico president rules out new 'war on drugs'
- Israeli defense minister postpones trip to Washington: Pentagon
- Europe skipper Donald in talks with Garcia over Ryder return
- Kenya MPs vote to impeach deputy president in historic move
- Former US coach Berhalter named Chicago Fire head coach
- New York Jets fire head coach Saleh: team
- Australia crush New Zealand in Women's T20 World Cup
- US states accuse TikTok of harming young users
- 'Evacuate now, now, now': Florida braces for next hurricane
- US Supreme Court skeptical of challenge to 'ghost guns' regulation
- Sparks fly as Orban berates EU 'elites' in parliament trip
- US finalizes rule to remove lead pipes within a decade
- Solanke hungry for second England cap after seven-year wait
- Gilded canopy restored at Vatican basilica
Mississippi clinic at heart of US Supreme Court's abortion reversal closes
Mississippi on Thursday became the latest US state to outlaw abortion after last month's Supreme Court ruling revoking protection for the procedure, leading to 11th-hour confrontations outside a clinic in Jackson.
Alternately thrilled or furious, opponents and supporters of abortion rights gathered outside Jackson Women's Health Organization, the facility at the heart of the United States Supreme Court's decision stating access to pregnancy termination is not a constitutional right.
Nicknamed the Pink House because of the building's colorful walls, Jackson Women's Health performed its final abortions Wednesday and saw its last consultation patients Thursday ahead of its closure.
Brandishing signs reading "Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind," dozens of abortion rights opponents greeted the final trickle of patients with music and shouted prayers.
On the opposite side of the gathering, abortion rights advocates answered with placards referencing the poor southern state's high maternal death rate to ask, "Why do you care more about hypothetical lives than real ones?" and others proclaiming "Abortion is health care."
Cheryl Hamlin, one of the doctors who had until Thursday worked at Jackson Women's Health, vehemently took the anti-abortion protesters to task outside the pink building, accusing them of not respecting women's rights.
In recent years, Jackson Women's Health was the only place to offer abortion care in religiously conservative Mississippi. That status left the clinic as the logical organization to take legal action when state legislators passed a law restricting abortion in 2018.
The case eventually made its way to the nation's high court, which on June 24 overturned its own landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that had enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion in federal law.
Thirteen states, anticipating the seismic shift by the court, had already passed trigger laws to ban abortion, which were designed to take effect immediately after the overturning of Roe.
Approximately seven of them have so far successfully banned abortion entirely, but legal battles have delayed the end date in states such as Louisiana.
Mississippi's 2007 law, which went into effect on Thursday, carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison for violations, and provides exceptions only in cases of danger to the life of the mother -- but not for rape or incest.
Diane Derzis, the owner of Jackson Women's Health, now plans to move to Las Cruces, New Mexico, which "for the time being is a very receptive state. We've been welcomed," she told NPR public radio.
Other clinics are also in the process of relocating to New Mexico or Illinois, but, Derzis added she was concerned there would not be enough facilities to handle the influx of patients from the South crossing state lines to seek abortions.
"I'm not sure we're ready for it," she said.
Ultimately abortion access is expected to disappear in about half of the country's 50 states.
O.M.Souza--AMWN