The U.S. Supreme Court’s expected decision to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer will impact a broad swath of Mississippians, particularly college students, who have a high need for reproductive health care.
Women in their 20s make up the majority of Mississippians who seek abortions in the state, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Health and the Guttmacher Institute. While it’s unclear the rate at which Mississippi college students in particular seek out abortions, studies have found that the top reasons students stop going to school are pregnancy, the need to care for family, and insufficient access to child care.
That’s why advocates and public health experts say that colleges and universities should provide students with holistic and inclusive reproductive health care — and, if Roe is outlawed, that access is going to become all the more important.
Mississippi Today surveyed the reproductive health care services and sexual education resources offered at the state’s eight public universities by calling the student health centers and requesting information from media relations. In general, Mississippi’s three largest universities — University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, and University of Southern Mississippi — offer more on-campus reproductive health services than the smaller schools, which typically refer students to nearby clinics for exams.
All eight universities offer free condoms but only one school, Jackson State University, provides students with regular access to free Plan B emergency contraception via appointments.
This list will be updated.
Alcorn State University’s Rowan Hall Health Services Center
More info
Lorman campus: 601-877-6460
The center does not have an on-campus OB-GYN, but does provide testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.
Condoms, offered for free, are the only type of birth control available at the center.
Once a student has received an initial dose of Depo-Provera, a form of birth control administered as a shot, the center can administer the second dose if the student brings it to the center.
The center does not offer emergency contraceptives like Plan B but will advise students to seek over-the-counter options available at Walmart in Vicksburg.
Free pregnancy tests are available to students.
The Child Development and Learning Center is available to Alcorn State employees. Fees are assessed on an income-based scale. Alcorn State University did not answer Mississippi Today’s questions if it provides on-campus child care to students.
Delta State University’s O.W. Reily Student Health Services
More info
662-846-4630
The nurse practitioner offers basic services like scripts for cough medication but does not provide lab testing or blood work.
The center will recommend students seeking pap smears go to the local health department.
The center does not offer emergency contraceptives like Plan B.
Condoms and diaphragms are offered for free in the center’s resource room.
The center has partnered with a mobile clinic to offer sexually transmitted disease (STD) testing.
The Hamilton-White Child Development Center is available to students with kids up to five years old. Tuition costs $5,928 and can be paid in 10- and 12-month installments.
Jackson State University’s Student Health Center
More info
601-979-2260
The center offers a variety of birth control options, including pills and the Depo-Provera shot, for free to students.
Students can get free Plan B from the center by making an appointment with a nurse practitioner.
Offers free STD testing and treatment, including HIV testing.
Pregnancy tests are available to students without an appointment.
Provides referrals for students seeking prenatal care to local OB-GYN clinics if they do not have access to their own private physicians.
Tuition for the Child Development and Family Studies Center, which MSU calls “an experiential child study laboratory,” costs $585 per month and is available to infants and kids up to five years old.
Mississippi University for Women’s Campus Health Center
More info
662- 329-7289
The nurse practitioners do not provide gynecological or urological exams, but they can write prescriptions for birth control.
The nurse practitioners can prescribe Plan B, but rarely do, according to the health center.
Free condoms are available at the center.
The center does not provide services to pregnant people or children under three.
The center offers pregnancy tests for $10.
The Child and Parent Development Center is available to children older than one until they start kindergarten. The center costs about $6,240 for the school year, but MUW students qualify for a 10% discount.
The Delta Health Center at Mississippi Valley State University
More info
662-644-4865
The nurse practitioner can do pap smears but will refer students seeking more in-depth care to an OB-GYN in Mound Bayou.
The center can write a prescription for birth control, which students will need to pick up at Walmart or a nearby pharmacy.
If a student brings Depo-Provera, the center can administer it.
The center does not offer Plan B but the emergency contraceptive is occasionally available for free at on-campus health fairs.
Condoms are offered for free.
Free pregnancy tests are provided.
The Child Development Center, operated by Delta Health Alliance, is available to students, faculty and community members with children between 2 and 5 years old. The center is free based on income.
University of Mississippi’s University Health Services
More info
662-915-7274 (students) 662-915-6550 (employees)
Students can access annual exams, including pap smears and breast exams, but health services cannot implant IUDs.
The center can write prescriptions for birth control, but it is not provided for free.
The center offers urine pregnancy tests for $38 and blood pregnancy tests for $40.
The pharmacy sells Plan B for about $30.
The Willie Price Lab School is available for children between 3 and 5 years old from “university-affiliated families.”
University of Southern Mississippi’s Moffitt Health Center
More info
601-266-5390
The Office of Health Promotion offers a free sex education training for instructors who request it.
The health center offers free, walk-in HIV testing. Other forms of STD testing are not offered for free but at a reduced rate that can be billed to insurance.
Free condoms are available in the pharmacy lobby and in patient rooms at the health center
The Center for Child Development is offered for children 8 weeks to 5 years old. Students with children can request financial assistance from the university through a U.S. Department of Education award called the “Child Care Access Means Parents In School” grant.
CLEVELAND — As a speech pathologist, Corrine Hegwood has been asking children what they like to read about for a long time.
But it’s a question she’s been asking more often recently, since she co-founded Reading at the Park with her husband and other community members. On Saturday, they hosted their sixth event at Sterling-Anderson Park in Cleveland, giving away books, diapers, and pizza to the families in attendance.
When she lived in Chattanooga, Corrine Hegwood noticed that children she worked with in low-income areas always gravitated towards books as a reward rather than toys. She started taking trunks full of books to her students and their friends, and Reading at the Park grew out of that project and the need she saw in Mississippi.
In Mississippi, 32% of children tested kindergarten ready when they started school. According to the Department of Education, research shows that if a child tests as kindergarten ready when they start school, they will be proficient in reading by the end of third grade.
“What I’m finding is that (children who struggle to read) are the ones sitting in the principal’s office, because they are communicating in a different way,” Corrine Hegwood said.
Margaret Katembe’s son Johnson poses for the camera while helping her register children at the Reading at the Park event in Cleveland, Miss., May 14, 2022 Credit: Julia James/Mississippi Today
Margaret Katembe, a librarian at Delta State, ran the check-in table, registering children and explaining the event to parents. She met the Hegwoods through their sons becoming friends and realized they had a shared passion for literacy which was cultivated into the Reading at the Park program.
Katembe said that turnout varies based on the size of the community they visit, but that overall she was pleased with the number of children that have attended each event. She also noted the collaborations with other groups have been helpful in attracting visitors.
“Today I can see diapers have been a big hit, and when they come for the diapers they leave with books,” Katembe said.
Once children are registered, volunteers walk with them to the book table for their age group and help them pick out books, which they take to a blanket to read together. Corrine Hegwood emphasized this process is about trying to help children find books that excite them and make them want to practice reading on their own.
The founders of the Reading at the Park program at their event in Cleveland, MS, May 14, 2022 (Left to right: Brittany Meador, Kierre Rimmer, Margaret Katembe, Corrine Hegwood, and Les Hegwood.) Credit: Julia James/Mississippi Today
At the event last Saturday, they registered over 60 children and had 30 volunteers. Since they started, they’ve given away about 1,500 books. So far, they’ve mostly been reaching older children, something they are trying to shift by partnering with the Diaper Bank of the Delta.
“Zero to five, that’s the time, that’s the window, that’s the most important time for brain development,” Corrine Hegwood said. “What they get in those first five years is an indicator of what kind of reader they are going to be.”
Les Hegwood, the priest at Calvary Episcopal Church in Cleveland, saw the need for more direct service opportunities in the church. He said the congregation has been enthusiastic in their support for the Reading at the Park program, both in terms of volunteers and funding. The program has also received funding from the Barksdale Reading Institute.
Les Hegwood explained that they have been intentional about developing a book list to buy from that is representative of the community they are serving in the Delta.
“(The list) features a lot of books that have African American characters in them, which are scarce unfortunately on library walls and in schools,” Les Hegwood said. They wanted books that “help foster a sense that ‘I am, and should be, the hero of these stories and myths that are being made in my little imagination.’”
Katembe and the Hegwoods emphasized the importance of meeting parents and children where they are, which is why they chose to focus on neighborhood parks. They are hoping to eventually get a retired shipping truck donated that they could turn into a “bookmobile” to drive the books to different communities.
Tracy Jones said she came with her children because she lives across the street from the park and wanted to see what was going on. Her son, who is in second grade, likes to read about sports. She reads mostly picture books with her almost two-year-old daughter, and said the diapers were particularly useful as they can be so expensive.
“We got ‘Snuggle Puppy’, one about the zoo, and ‘Lola Goes to the Library’,” Jones said. “I have to get the hard ones or she’ll tear them up.”
Kierre Rimmer, another co-founder of Reading at the Park, was introduced to the Hegwoods through his work as the founder of FLY Zone, a local youth empowerment organization that has been working with middle and high school students since 2013.
Rimmer said he’s seen a number of people he recognized from his work at the events, as well as a lot of new faces.
Corrine Hegwood helps a girl pick out books at the Reading at the Park event in Cleveland, Miss., May 14, 2022 Credit: Julia James/Mississippi Today
“Once they see me they get more relaxed when they come to events like this,” Rimmer said. “Les and his wife are still new, so I guess you could say I’m the gel or the liaison.”
Corrine Hegwood said for the children she meets, it’s often not a lack of interest, but a lack of access that prevents them from becoming stronger readers. She recalled a recent visit to Mound Bayou, where she was knocking on doors and met a sixth-grader.
“I said ‘well what do you want to read about?’ and she said ‘I want to read about everything.’ I just thought, ‘I want you to be able to read about everything too.’”
Editor’s note: Jim Barksdale, founder of the Barksdale Reading Institute, serves on Mississippi Today’s board of directors.
Booming natural gas prices, along with retiring coal plants and limited oil production, mean electric bills will likely go up across the country this summer.
That includes Mississippi, where both energy consumption and the inability to pay for electric bills rank among the highest of any state.
Earlier this month, the Energy Information Administration projected that electric bills nationwide will go up 4% on average this summer compared to 2021. EIA projects a 3% increase in the East South Central region, comprising Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi.
Generally, homes in southeastern states consume more electricity than those in the rest of the country. In 2020, the average Mississippi residence was using more electricity than only two other states, Louisiana and Tennessee.
“A lot of that is due to the climate,” said Central District Public Service Commissioner Brent Bailey. “But we also have older housing stock, many (homes) that have not gotten extensive upgrades, retrofits or weatherization.”
Bailey also said Mississippi has a lot of manufactured homes, which tend to be less energy efficient.
Even though the retail cost of energy in Mississippi is cheaper than the national average, paying energy bills is relatively challenging because the state consumes so much power and has by far the lowest median household income.
For low-income residents, the “energy burden” – how much of a person’s income goes to paying their power bill – is higher in Mississippi at 12% than in any other state, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Catherine Lee, who coordinates house health and safety programs for the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative in Jackson, explained that high utility bills force difficult budgeting decisions for homeowners.
“People will very often take care of rent and utilities first before they’re taking care of other health and food needs,” she said. “It is a common issue that a lot of the families we work with have to think about, and will have to figure out how to deal with payment plans if they get behind and, if they experience a shutoff, have to pay the fees to get things turned back on.”
Both Entergy Mississippi and Mississippi Power raised retail rates in response to the natural gas price hike, increasing the average monthly bill $7.81 and $5.27, respectively, WLBT reported.
Bailey and Lee both called for improving the state’s energy efficiency standards to reduce people’s power bills.
“As far as a statewide basis, we don’t have a minimum construction code built around efficient construction in housing, which is something I think needs strong consideration,” Bailey said.
While some cities have their own measures, Mississippi has no uniform energy efficiency standards for construction like many states do, he explained. He added that landlords lack incentives to make those changes.
“What is the motivation of a landlord to invest in weatherization upgrades if they’re still getting the same price for that rental?” he said.
The PSC-regulated utilities, such as Entergy Mississippi, Mississippi Power, and Atmos, all offer programs to encourage efficiency, such as rebates for replacing old appliances or in-person audits to check for things like insulation.
Lee said those measures have a limited reach.
“The way that the programs are currently administered don’t have any energy reduction targets for utilities,” she said. “There’s no metrics to track how they’re improving efficiency overall.”
A scorecard of energy efficiency policies, put together by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, ranked Mississippi 48th in the country in 2020.
Even after accounting for the differences in weather, home age and home size, low-income homes in Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas use 36% more electricity than those in other states, according to the DOE.
“That’s to me showing that our housing stock has a significant need for upgrades that they’re not getting because we’re not investing in it enough,” Lee said.
As part of new funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Mississippi received over $28 million to help implement its Weatherization Assistance Program, which provides funding for installing insulation, updating appliances and other efficiency measures through the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
In the days after the leak of a draft opinion showing the U.S. Supreme Court will likely overturn Roe v. Wade, hundreds of Mississippians visited the website Plan C to learn about ordering abortion medication online.
From Jackson and Long Beach, Oxford and tiny Centerville, people used the site to find out how to obtain the pills that will likely become the easiest, cheapest way to end a pregnancy in post-Roe Mississippi.
In the last week of April, 175 people in the state went to the site. In the first four days of May, around the time the leak was published on the evening of May 2, that number rose to 306, according to Elisa Wells, a co-founder of Plan C, which doesn’t ship pills itself but helps people find how to get them.
The next week, traffic stayed elevated, at 275.
Opponents and supporters of abortion rights agree: After Roe, the future of the abortion fight in Mississippi lies in a set of pills that can end a pregnancy under 10 weeks.
Mississippi law forbids the use of telehealth to prescribe the medication. But the founder of the organization Aid Access, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, is based in Austria, and when she writes a prescription for a Mississippian, she is following that country’s laws.
She sends the prescription to a pharmacist in India, who can mail them right to a doorstep in Belzoni or Biloxi. People can also buy the pills directly from online pharmacies based overseas.
Anti-abortion lawmakers have vowed to crack down on the cross-border transactions that bring the medication here, where strict laws have left just one abortion clinic standing. But they’ll face determined opposition from local activists allied with prescribers and pharmacies scattered around the world.
“With all of the medical technology we have now, it’s ludicrous for the antis (anti-abortion advocates) to think we aren’t going to do it and help each other,” said Michelle Colón, executive director of SHERo Mississippi, a nonprofit that aims to promote leadership among Black women and girls in the state. “We are going to do it right under their noses, and they won’t know, or they will know it, but they’re not going to be able to prove it.”
At Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, more than half of patients get medication abortions. Mississippi law requires them to take the first pill, mifepristone, which stops the pregnancy from growing, at the clinic.
The next set of pills, misoprostol, opens the cervix and triggers cramping and bleeding to end the pregnancy in a process that looks like a miscarriage.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the pills in 2000. In December, the federal government permanently authorized telemedicine prescriptions for the drugs, but Mississippi and other states ban that practice.
Yet buying the pills outside of the formal medical system is not uncommon for Mississippians. A 2020 study examined more than 6,000 requests from U.S. residents for abortion pills from an online telemedicine service in 2017 and 2018. It found that Mississippians requested the pills more frequently than people in any other state, likely a consequence of the barriers to accessing abortion through in-state providers.
The state’s 2007 trigger law, which will go into effect if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, bans abortion except in cases of rape and when the mother’s life is in danger. It doesn’t make a distinction between different types of abortion, so it will prohibit medication abortions as well as surgical procedures.
But lawmakers see a need for additional action against the pills.
Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, has authored numerous abortion restrictions. A separate law regarding medication abortion could help direct law enforcement to focus on that issue, and the Legislature could also allocate funding to support that work, he said.
Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, is photographed during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019, in Jackson, Miss. Fillingane helped usher through the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, a bill that would ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Supporters and opponents anticipate a court fight if passed into law. Credit: Rogelio V. Solis, Associated Press
“We know this is a new layer of law enforcement that we’re going to be expecting of you, in the agency, attorney general’s office — whomever it’ll apply to. You’re going to need more staff, you’re going to need more resources in order to enforce that new law,” Fillingane said in an interview with Mississippi Today. “It could very well be not only a directive further fleshing out the trigger law language, but also an appropriations bill that sends money to that agency and agencies that will be tasked with enforcing the law.”
Fillingane says a prohibition on abortion drugs could be enforced through lawsuits against the people, organizations and manufacturers sending prohibited medications into Mississippi.
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Mississippi’s reproductive rights activists don’t see how that could work given that many providers and pharmacies are based abroad.
“I’m not sure where (Fillingane) thinks the pills are going to be coming from,” said Laurie Bertram Roberts, co-founder of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund and executive director of the Alabama-based Yellowhammer Fund. “Arkansas? He’s just going to, like, come on over there in his seersucker suit and demand that these people be prosecuted? He’s not going to go over to Austria and impress anyone and round up Rebecca Gomperts. … India’s not going to be impressed by Joey Fillingane and let him come over there and round people up and jail them.”
If the past is any indicator, Gomperts — an abortion rights advocate — won’t be swayed by the state of Mississippi. The FDA sent Aid Access a warning letter in 2019 telling it to stop selling “misbranded and unapproved new drugs” in the U.S., because the specific brands Aid Access provides its patients are not FDA-approved.
Gomperts has continued to operate the site.
The organization works with pharmacies based in India because generics produced in the country are high quality and government-supervised, she has said. She sees strict regulation of abortion medication as based on politics.
Research shows medication abortion is safe: The FDA recorded 22 deaths among people who used mifepristone from 2000 to 2017, an average of one in 155,000, compared to a maternal mortality rate of 17 in 100,000 as of 2018. In February, a study in the Lancet found that 1% of people who used Aid Access’ services to end a pregnancy reported requiring medical treatment, either through a blood transfusion or IV antibiotics, a higher rate than recorded in clinical settings, but one researchers still described as rare.
Christie Pitney is a certified nurse midwife and a U.S.-based clinician for Aid Access. She and her colleagues in the U.S. provide telemedicine services for patients in states where that is legal, while Gomperts handles prescribing for patients where that practice is banned. Pitney said state laws won’t stop Aid Access from operating.
“Aid Access and our attorney are confident that there’s just no jurisdiction within the states to regulate Dr. Gomperts and stop her from providing those services,” she said. “So it will definitely continue to be available in Mississippi, unless they remove the fact that it’s a federal crime to open someone else’s mail. Until they get to that level, we’ll still be here.”
More generally, the law in this area is murky and contested. If a provider in California was complying with California laws when prescribing a medication abortion for a patient in Mississippi, legal questions arise: Which state would have jurisdiction? Even if a state could prevail in a lawsuit against an overseas provider, how would it enforce the judgment?
“They don’t keep money in Mississippi,” said Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas and an expert on health law. “There’s not a bank account that Aid Access has that the state can draw upon to recover the judgment. So it just may have little effect on Aid Access. Or no effect, I should say.”
Fillingane said enforcement of laws banning abortion medication could work like other drug laws in Mississippi. But there’s no clear precedent for states banning and criminalizing drugs that are FDA-approved, safe and widely used around the country.
The warning letter to Aid Access came from the FDA because the federal government is responsible for regulating the trade through which pharmaceuticals are distributed around the country.
“We’re in a big, huge, gray zone, and nobody really knows exactly how it will end,” said Laurie Sobel, associate director for women’s health policy at KFF, a nonprofit focused on health policy research.
This legal gray area is playing out in a Mississippi lawsuit.
GenBioPro, the manufacturer of a generic version of mifepristone, sued State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs and the health department in 2020, arguing that the state’s strict regulations conflict with the FDA’s rules.
In many ways, Mississippi law treats abortion pills like any other abortion, requiring patients to go through a counseling session and ultrasound before taking mifepristone in a doctor’s presence at the clinic. The FDA, however, allows more practitioners to prescribe mifepristone and says patients can take the pill in their own homes.
The GenBioPro lawsuit claims it is unconstitutional for states to regulate FDA-approved substances much more stringently than the federal authorities because the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives the federal government the authority to regulate interstate commerce, and implicitly prohibits states from passing laws that excessively burden that commerce.
A Massachusetts ban on Zohydro, a new and controversial but FDA-approved opioid, was overturned by a federal court that found the state ban was preempted by federal law. But legal experts interviewed by Mississippi Today said there’s little case law in this area otherwise.
Rally organizers Michelle Colon and pro-abortion supporters from across the country rally in Smith Park in Jackson to show their alliegiance for a woman’s right to choose, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Regardless of how preemption arguments play out, advocates and attorneys believe it will be easier and more common for states to enforce medication abortion bans by prosecuting people inside their borders. That could be friends or relatives who share abortion medication with a pregnant person, or even pregnant people themselves in states that criminalize self-managed abortions.
Pitney said Aid Access recognizes patients in states like Mississippi will assume greater legal risk if Roe is overturned. The organization refers patients to the legal helpline operated by the nonprofit If/When/How.
Mississippi’s trigger law banning abortion in most cases specifies that it can’t be used to prosecute a woman for ending her own pregnancy, but any person who “knowingly or recklessly performs or attempts to perform or induce an abortion in the State of Mississippi” can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.
The state also has a law against the “killing of an unborn child” that applies starting at conception. The law states it doesn’t apply to any lawful abortion, but if all abortions become unlawful in Mississippi, it could also be used to prosecute attempts to end a pregnancy, and there’s no exception protecting a pregnant person from such prosecution.
The technological advances that created medication abortion mean that post-Roe, criminalized abortions will be much safer than they were before 1973. But those advances also mean that people could be subjected to new levels of state scrutiny if police and prosecutors take a hard line in enforcing medication abortion bans.
“Everyone is carrying around tiny little computers in their hands,” Elizabeth Sepper, law professor and health care expert at the University of Texas, said. “States will probably engage in electronic surveillance, figuring out who are the actors most likely to be distributing these particular pills, tracking them, determining who they are in communication with.”
Such surveillance has already played a role in prosecutions relating to pregnancy outcomes in Mississippi. In 2018, Oktibbeha County charged Latice Fisher with second-degree murder after she delivered a baby she said was stillborn.
Prosecutors looked through her cell phone data and found a search for “buy abortion pills,” which they used to establish motive and suggest the pills may have affected her pregnancy and delivery. After reproductive rights advocates got involved, the charges were eventually dropped.
In the future, advocates fear that a person who arrives at the hospital with complications from a miscarriage could face intrusive questioning from hospital staff and police seeking to determine whether a crime has been committed. Their internet search history could be used against them.
“What I think we will see more of is that pregnancy losses, which are incredibly common … will be subject to policing, surveillance, questioning, intrusive, really harmful conversations with health care providers and law enforcement, because oftentimes miscarriages and self-managed abortions appear identically, or they’re indistinguishable from a medical perspective,” said Dana Sussman, acting executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which worked on Fisher’s case.
And local prosecutors could choose to handle investigations and charges very differently, so pregnant people in Mississippi could become subject to greater scrutiny based solely on where they live.
“It is remarkable the amount of power and discretion local prosecutors have,” Sussman said.
In Mississippi, abortion rights advocates are less concerned about the availability of the pills and more worried about the criminalization of people who use them — and even of people who naturally lose a pregnancy and find themselves treated like potential criminals.
Even if Mississippi passes no new abortion restrictions beyond the trigger ban, zealous anti-abortion local prosecutors could come up with a justification for serious charges when they believe an abortion has taken place or been attempted. Black and brown women will be at particular risk of criminalization and punishment, Colón said.
Fillingane says he is not interested in legislation that would fine or punish people for using the pills. He also doesn’t envision Mississippi law enforcement taking drastic measures to seek out people who possess the pills.
“I don’t foresee that happening in the normal course and scope of things as a law enforcement mechanism,” he said. “I think what you do is you cut it off at the source. That’s much easier to enforce, and it’s much more effective to enforce.”
Advocates don’t buy that. But whatever steps lawmakers and prosecutors take, they are determined to maintain access to abortion medication inside state borders.
This time, Colón said, there will be no coat hangers or drinking of bleach.
“Medication abortion is safe,” she said. “I’m not being quiet about it.”
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Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney sent a letter late Friday to attorneys for Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi and University of Mississippi Medical Center on behalf of Frank Dungan, the Madison resident in need of a liver transplant who was featured in recent Mississippi Today stories.
Dungan, a liver transplant candidate at UMMC with Blue Cross insurance, is currently ineligible for a transplant because of the hospital’s out-of-network status with the insurance company. UMMC went out of network on April 1 after it and Blue Cross failed to resolve a contract dispute.
Blue Cross is steering Dungan toward out-of-state transplant centers in Memphis or Birmingham, but Dungan wants to stay with UMMC, where he’s developed relationships with doctors who know his history.
Over the past month, Dungan attempted to get cost estimates from both UMMC and Blue Cross of what each party will charge and pay if he received his transplant at the hospital while it was still out of network with the insurer. He couldn’t get answers from either, so he started making calls to everyone he could think of — including officials at the Mississippi Insurance Department.
Chaney told UMMC and Blue Cross he thinks Dungan’s request is “very reasonable.”
“He simply asks that UMMC provide a good faith estimate of what his liver transplant will cost, including an estimate of what he may be looking at in terms of increased charges due to balance billing for services which may be rendered beyond June 30,” Chaney wrote in the May 13 letter. “Further, he requests that BCBSMS take the estimated charges furnished by UMMC and provide a good faith estimate of the ‘in-network rate’ reimbursement that would be provided by BCBSMS … He needs this information in order to determine whether he has sufficient savings and personal assets to cover any excess charges that may apply.”
Chaney also asked that the two parties work together to ensure he can receive a transplant without becoming financially destitute or traveling long distances for care.
“Please work together to enter a single case agreement that will shield Mr. Dungan from any excess charges above and beyond his standard cost-sharing responsibilities,” wrote Chaney. “This single case approach will allow Mr. Dungan to receive the life-saving transplant he so desperately needs without depleting his life savings and without him having to travel long distances to have the procedure done in a location where he has no family or other support group who could assist him in the recovery and healing process.”
He asked both Blue Cross and UMMC to respond to Dungan and the insurance department by Tuesday, May 17 at 10 a.m.
Dungan said a representative from UMMC called him over the weekend to provide a cost estimate for the transplant surgery if he paid completely out of pocket. The hospital is going back to create an updated estimate for the cost if insurance is involved – meaning Dungan would direct Blue Cross to pay its “network benefit” amount directly to him to then pay UMMC. Dungan would then be responsible for the balance between what UMMC charged and Blue Cross paid.
Chaney made another pointed statement at the end of the letter: He asked the lawyers to review state law that requires health insurance companies maintain a network of doctors that is “sufficient and numbers and types of participating providers to covered persons will be accessible without unreasonable delay.”
This is not the first time Chaney has raised concerns over whether Blue Cross is meeting network adequacy requirements with UMMC out of network.
Chaney referred to the “unique services” only available at UMMC in a March 3 letter to Carol Pigott, Blue Cross’ president and chief executive officer. He cited the children’s hospital, organ and tissue transplant program and Level IV neonatal intensive care unit, among other programs.
“Without the adequate availability of these specialized services in the BCBSMS Network, I believe there would be a disruption of needed health care services to consumers in Mississippi, thus potentially creating a Network Adequacy issue for BCBSMS,” the letter, which was also sent to the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House of Representatives, stated.
Chaney directed Blue Cross to produce a “Network Adequacy Status Report” showing how Blue Cross will meet its statutory requirements if UMMC goes out of network.
Cayla Mangrum, manager of corporate communications, said the report was “confidential and proprietary” when Mississippi Today asked for a copy of Blue Cross’ response.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch is citing backlash she’s received from her lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to reverse a national right to an abortion as reason to seal records dealing with the probate of the estate of her deceased father.
Fitch, a first-term Republican attorney general, and her sister, Lisa Fitch Wavro, are challenging whether their father William O. Fitch, who died in September 2021, was of sound “mental capacity” when he terminated a prenuptial agreement he had with his wife, Aleita Fitch, who is the sisters’ stepmother. Because of William Fitch’s alleged mental state in January 2021, when the prenuptial was dissolved, the sisters contend they are “the only beneficiaries” of the estate.
Fitch recently filed a motion in Marshall County Chancery Court asking the judge to seal “any and all financial-related information of the estate to protect the integrity of these proceedings from attention and media coverage that might hamper resolution of the estate.”
Fitch says that if her father’s case remains public record, she would be subject to “harassment, abuse and even threats to personal safety” — citing threats she has received as she argues that the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade.
“The attorney general for the state of Mississippi would be subject to harassment, abuse and even threats to her personal safety if the information is included in the public record of the court,” Fitch’s filing says. “General Fitch has been the subject of threatening comments and actions in the past because of positions she has taken as attorney general, and in particular recently in response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case which she brought before the United States Supreme Court and as to which a draft opinion of the court was leaked.”
The SCOTUS case seeks to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion under certain parameters. The case was argued in December 2021, and recently a draft opinion was leaked that would provide enough votes on the Supreme Court to reverse the 1973 decision.
Fitch and her sister have been in a protracted legal battle with Aleita Fitch. The original litigation involved conservatorship of William Fitch.
Those court documents also were sealed. But before they were sealed, there were allegations by Aleita Fitch and her attorneys that Lynn Fitch used the power of her office in the battle over conservatorship.
Published reports accused Fitch of using state “bodyguards” to take without permission money, firearms and other papers from Aleita Fitch’s residence.
In the lawsuit, Aleita Fitch accused the attorney general of moving William Fitch from a hospital in Oxford without having authority to do so. Lynn Fitch responded that Aleita Fitch was verbally abusive toward her father.
William Fitch was a successful north Mississippi businessman who played a significant role in financing his daughter’s first foray into politics, her successful campaign in 2011 for the office of treasurer.
State Auditor Shad White, whose welfare investigation has recently been called into question, is one in a long line of Mississippi state auditors with higher political ambition. Mississippi Today’s political team breaks down that history and discusses how White’s recent words and actions mirror the strategy of many of his predecessors.
How much difference can one player make in a baseball lineup?
Plenty. Just take a look at two Mississippi teams.
Ole Miss has won seven straight game and four straight against nationally ranked teams (on the road). During that streak, senior left fielder Kevin Graham is hitting .572 with four home runs, seven runs scored and 10 runs batted in.
Rick Cleveland
Graham, who surely possesses one of the sweetest swings in all of college baseball, was on the bench with a broken wrist from March 6 until April 8. During his absence, the Rebels won nine games and lost eight. Before and after his injury, the Rebels are 22-11. (They were 10-1 and ranked No. 2 in the nation when Graham got hurt.)
This is not to say that Graham is solely responsible for the Rebels’ impressive seven-game win streak. But it is to say that his presence as the clean-up hitter makes the Ole Miss batting order so much more imposing. As a result, Tim Elko, the 3-hole hitter, sees far better pitches. The opposition has to think twice, maybe three times, about pitching around Elko when Graham is in the on deck circle. Graham makes the entire lineup look different.
“There’s no doubt our lineup is a lot harder to navigate with Kevin Graham right in the middle of it,” Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco said Sunday night. “The guy can just hit. He had that same swing when he committed to us in the ninth grade. The guy couldn’t swing a bat for four and a half weeks and look at what he’s doing now.”
It also helps that Ole Miss has settled on a pitching rotation that has been much improved recently.
Southern Miss had won 14 straight games and was ranked No. 5 in the land when the Golden Eagles lost their left fielder and 3-hole hitter Reece Ewing. The Eagles were 32-8 overall, 16-2 in Conference USA when Ewing suffered a broken bone in his hand against Rice.
Ewing missed the next nine games, and Southern Miss was 4-5 in those games. He returned on Friday night against UTSA and the Eagles won the weekend series with Ewing playing a key role. Again, Ewing wasn’t solely responsible for the crucial series victory that gives the Eagles a three-game Conference USA lead with just three games to play. But his presence was absolutely crucial.
Ewing batted 13 times against UTSA. He reached base eight of those with six walks, a double and a home run.
During his absence, the Eagles batters left runner after runner on base, often chasing pitches far out of the strike zone. Upon his return, he showed the patience that had been sadly lacking from his teammates, which wasn’t lost on Southern Miss coach Scott Berry.
“Something you learn about Reece Ewing is that he doesn’t swing at pitches out of the zone,” Berry said. “The guy hasn’t seen the field in I don’t know how long, but he doesn’t get himself out.”
In Saturday and Sunday victories, it was as if the other Southern Miss batters took a cue from Ewing, waited for something in the zone to swing, and then made the pitcher pay. They hit six home runs on Sunday.
Here’s the deal with both the Rebels’ Graham and the Eagles’ Ewing. They weren’t able to take batting practice during all those games they missed. This wasn’t like the Major Leagues. They didn’t get rehab assignments before they returned to the lineup. In Ewing’s case, he had a cast removed on Thursday and was back in the lineup on Friday.
Graham’s recent tear could not have come at a more opportune time for Ole Miss, which has soared to a No. 38 RPI after being down in the 60s. The Rebels have played their way back in to the NCAA Tournament picture and can rise even higher with Texas A&M (33-16, 17-10 and No. 20 RPI) coming to Oxford for a three-game weekend series.
With three regular season games to play, nationally ranked Southern Miss is still very much in play to host an NCAA Regional. The Eagles need to win the CUSA regular season title — which they will do with one victory at Middle Tennessee next weekend — and then play well when they host the Conference USA Tournament.
Don’t know how much NCAA selection committee takes into consideration what happened when key players were missing from the lineup. But clearly, Graham at Ole Miss and Ewing at Southern Miss make their teams much bigger threats to make a deep postseason run.
