In 1973, the revolutionary Roe v. Wade declared abortion a constitutional right. But ever since, the anti-choice community has worked tirelessly to turn this decision around. Now, although Roe v. Wade remains legal precedent, in a practical sense these anti-choicers have succeeded in their work.

Take Mississippi as an example. There are currently eight states in the country that have only one abortion clinic, and Mississippi is one of them. Back in 1992, the state of Mississippi housed a total of 8 clinics scattered throughout the state. Now, in 2018, it has only one, located in its capital city of Jackson.

This drastic reduction in the number of clinics is largely due to a series of legislation passed by the Mississippi legislature. The laws are known as TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws, and are created to impose such harsh restrictions that many abortion clinics find it impossible to operate and are forced to shut down.

Two laws in particular stand out, as they have been frequently cited as contributing factors towards the shut-down of clinics across the state: the mandatory 24-hour wait and the parental consent requirement.

24 Hour Wait

In 1992, Mississippi became the first state in the country to enforce a waiting period requirement. This regulation meant that women seeking abortions had to come in for a mandatory counseling session that detailed the risks of abortion, and then had to wait at least twenty-four hours before they could undergo the actual procedure (Rosenberg 3). For many women below a certain income level — and there is certainly no shortage of such women in America's poorest state — this proved to be an extremely cumbersome requirement. Many poor Mississippi women cannot afford to travel back and forth from their hometowns, often hours away from the nearest clinic, even one time, let alone twice. And they certainly cannot afford to pay for motels for their required overnight stay.

As a result, many women delay their abortion while they gather up money to pay for a second trip to the clinic. This pushes the date of their procedures later into their pregnancy, which is both more risky and more costly. Other women sleep in their cars overnight, others go to a different state to obtain an abortion, and others forgo the procedure altogether and carry the unwanted child to term. These effects are so severe that representatives from New Woman Medical Center, a Mississippi clinic that no longer operates, claimed that it was because of this law that the clinic "abruptly went from doing 90 abortions a week to doing 30 or 40" (Rosenberg 3).

The extra twenty-four hours also provides the many pro-life activists that protest outside clinics with more time to attempt to dissuade abortion seekers. As one 1992 Washington Post article states, "antiabortion protesters note license numbers, then try to contact women after their state-mandated counselling and before an abortion" (Booth). And this strategy can indeed be effective, according to one pro-life activist who used to protest outside the now non-extant Mississippi Women's Medical Clinic. "'It's working,' she said. 'We're saving babies.'" (Booth).

Finally, to emphasize the harsh consequences of the mandatory wait law, I turn to a U.S. News & World Report article. Clinics in Mississippi, the article claimed, blamed the 24-hour state waiting period "for a 50 percent drop in the number of abortion patients" ("Many Court Battles Still Ahead").

Parental Consent

In 1993, a year after the mandatory waiting period law became effective, Mississippi accepted the parental consent law. This TRAP regulation required minors, individuals under the age of 18, to obtain parental consent from both parents in order to obtain an abortion. Many states have some form of parental consent requirement for minors, but Mississippi is one of few to require both parents to consent to the procedure. And although there is a judicial waiver that a minor can obtain should she be unable to obtain parental consent, many girls are unaware that such a measure exists and many others who are aware have no idea who to call to try to obtain one (Rosenberg 4).

Yet even those girls who are aware of the existence of the waiver and manage to find someone to help them attain one are in a tricky situation. As the August 1993 edition of the ABA Journal notes, "An immature minor who could show that an abortion was in her best interests, but who could not show that notification of her parents was not in her best interests (as would be the case if she had understanding and supportive parents who nonetheless were opposed to abortion) would be unable to obtain authorization for an abortion" ("Parental Consent" 89).

The effect of the both parent consent law was immediate. The Guttmacher Institute conducted a 1995 study entitled, "The Impact of Requirements for Parental Consent on Minors' Abortion in Mississippi." In this study, it was found that the minor abortion rate within Mississippi decreased by 16% in the months following the enactment of the law. It was also found that the out-of-state abortion rate by Mississippi minors increased during the same time, indicating that many minors were going outside of Mississippi to seek abortion services, to states where requirements were less stringent (Henshaw 121).

Yet even though minors were bypassing the law by finding services elsewhere, the 1993 parental consent TRAP law still contributed to the decline of demand for abortion services within Mississippi. As a result, less patients were patrons at Mississippi clinics, meaning the clinics were more likely to close due to decrease in business and therefore profits.

General

The above laws, along with many other laws that regulate everything from the width of a clinic's hallways to the size of its parking lot, take business away from the clinics and also demand of them costly renovations to meet state standards. When clinics are unable to comply, the government acts to shut them down. Indeed, this is what happened to so many of the clinics in Mississippi over the last two decades. The unfortunate result is that although abortion is technically legal within the country, in Mississippi it is nearly impossible to get one.

Citation:

Booth, W. (1992, Nov 07). Mississippi's 24-hour countdown for abortions. The Washington Post (1974-Current File) Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/docview/140741229?accountid=13626

Henshaw, Stanley K. "The Impact of Requirements for Parental Consent on Minors' Abortions in Mississippi." Family Planning Perspectives, vol. 27, no. 3, 1995, p. 120., doi:10.2307/2136110.

"Many Court Battles Still Ahead." U.S News & World Report, 14 Dec. 1992.

"Parental Consent." ABA Journal, vol. 79, no. 8, Aug. 1993, p. 89. EBSCOhost.

Rosenberg, Tina. "The Stealth War Against Abortion." Rolling Stone, 27 June 1996.