Jackson Women’s Health Organization Files Suit Over TRAP Law
Unable to get hospital privileges for its practitioners, the clinic has filed a lawsuit against enforcing the new law.
Unable to obtain hospital admitting privileges for their certified OB-GYNs, Jackson Women’s Health Organization has announced that it has filed a lawsuit.
Via The Washington Post:
The law takes effect Sunday, but the clinic is asking a federal judge in Jackson to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the state from enforcing it.
The clinic said the unjustified requirement in the law is that it requires anyone who performs an abortion at a clinic to be an OB-GYN with privileges to admit patients to a local hospital. Lawmakers said that is for patients’ safety. The lawsuit says it’s impossible for the clinic’s physicians to get local hospital admitting privileges by Sunday.
The JWHO is being represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights in the suit. On their website, the CRR states:
“For years, we have been beating back Mississippi’s underhanded tactics to close the only abortion clinic in the state,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Mississippi lawmakers’ hostility to women and their reproductive rights does not give them license to violate their constitutional rights.
“This measure would force Mississippi women who are already facing difficult circumstances to travel hundreds of miles to a neighboring state to get an abortion. That is simply not an option for many poor and working-class women, and will certainly lead some to consider unsafe and illegal alternatives that pose grave risks to their health, lives, and reproductive future.”
The clinic already has a transfer agreement in place with a local hospital should there be any complications post-abortion. Lawmakers intent not on guaranteeing women’s safety but on shutting down the state’s only clinic have responded by saying that is not good enough.
Without an injunction, the clinic is expected to be evaluated for non-compliance on Monday, July 2nd, with lawmakers eager to hurry or even all together eliminate the 10 day waiting period for a clinic to attempt to come into compliance before it is closed.