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The 90-day grace period that allowed Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi customers to receive in-network rates at University of Mississippi Medical Center despite the hospital being outside the insurer’s network expired on Friday, leaving patients with no options other than seeking their care elsewhere or taking on exorbitant out-of-pocket costs. 

UMMC, the state’s safety net hospital, went out of network with the state’s largest private insurer on April 1 due to disagreements over reimbursement rates and Blue Cross’ quality care plan. 

The two parties agreed to enter mediation proceedings in late April, and had agreed on a mediator, Walter Johnson, by May 9, but Mississippi Insurance Commissioner says both parties are being “unreasonable,” indicating they are nowhere close to a deal.

When Blue Cross and UMMC used the mediation process to settle their contract dispute in 2018, it only took around 10 days to strike a deal. 

On Friday, Chaney sent a letter to Blue Cross, informing him that the Mississippi Insurance Department will be conducting a targeted market conduct examination of the insurer to determine whether it is in compliance with the state’s network adequacy regulations. 

He also released a statement saying he has received many emails and calls from Mississippians caught in the middle of the dispute, and that he is disturbed by the impact the dispute is having on them.

“This is a stark reminder that the only ones impacted by the dispute are the consumers,” Chaney said in the statement. “As your Insurance Commissioner, I am doing everything I can to ensure that individuals continue to have access to the healthcare provider of their choice with minimal disruption.”

State law requires insurers to provide reasonable access to all types of care included in the insured’s coverage plan. The concern is that without UMMC in its network, BCBS is not meeting this requirement due to the litany of specialty services UMMC provides that can’t be found elsewhere in the state.

The areas of concern that Chaney signaled out in the letter are:

• The services provided at Blaire E. Batson Children’s Hospital
• Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
• Pediatric and Adult Congenital Heart Programs
• Children’s Cancer Care Program
• Sickle Cell Anemia Program
• Heart, Kidney, Liver and Pancreas Transplant Program
• UMMC’s relationship with Methodist Rehabilitation Center
• UMMC’s Satellite Facilities

Chaney said that MID is in the process of appointing an examiner to conduct the review. If the review finds that Blue Cross is violating network adequacy regulations, Chaney can revoke the authority of the insurer to operate in Mississippi, impose a fine of up to $5,000 per violation, or both. 

It will likely be months before the review is completed and its findings are made publicly available. The Department completed a similar review of United HealthCare on Nov. 10, 2017, and the final report wasn’t sent to the insurer until nearly four months later. 

UMMC spokesperson Marc Rolph declined to comment on the market conduct examination or confirm whether or not the hospital had renewed its contract with Chancellor Consulting Group, a California-based group that UMMC has been paying $50,000 per month since mid-September for help with its negotiation efforts. That contract expired Friday. 

Blue Cross did not respond to request for comment by the time of publication. Earlier this week, Cayla Mangrum, manager of corporate communications at Blue Cross, told Mississippi Today that they are prohibited from discussing mediation, though there is no legal requirement to not discuss the process. 

The post With no deal reached between UMMC, Blue Cross, Chaney announces network adequacy review of insurer appeared first on Mississippi Today.

INDIANOLA — U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh told Black farm workers that his office would combat the racist wage and hiring practices by white farm owners during his first visit to the Mississippi Delta Thursday.

The Department of Labor head’s pledge to local workers comes after a Mississippi Today investigation uncovered a pattern of farm owners skirting federal regulations to underpay Black workers in addition to pushing them out of jobs in favor of foreign workers – mainly, white men from South Africa. 

“I can’t promise you today that things are going to change overnight,” Walsh told local farm workers. “But l can promise you that it will not be 10 years from now, it will not be five years from now… it will not be one year from now. When I get back to my office in D.C. … we are working on this.” 

Walsh met with seven men named in a lawsuit against Indianola’s Pitts Farms at the Mississippi Center for Justice office in Indianola. Also in attendance was U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson. 

“What I heard today in this meeting was discrimination. What I heard today in this meeting was racism,” Walsh said. “I don’t know where the senators of the state are. I don’t know where the governor of the state (is), and I certainly don’t know where the congressional delegation in the state is because you have workers in this state that are being taken advantage of and discriminated against.”

The Mississippi Center for Justice, which offers free legal services, has filed two lawsuits that accuse farm owners of not only paying Black workers less than their white counterparts, but also pushing them out of their jobs. 

One of the attorneys, Sharkey County native Ty Pinkins, shared new details regarding alleged discrimination on Delta farms that had not previously been shared publicly. The examples mirrored the experiences many of the workers lived through during Jim Crow.

Pinkins said workers reported that while white South Africans were able to use indoor bathrooms, Black local workers were forced to relieve themselves outdoors. Pinkins shared another incident in which he said white South African workers were provided cold water while Black workers were told they needed to buy their own. 

Mississippi Today’s investigation – “Exploited” – found at least five Delta farms that paid their local workers, who are mostly Black, less money per hour than foreign workers who came to work in Mississippi on agriculture visas through the H-2A program.

Walsh said his office is examining the program so it can no longer be misused by farms – especially by farms in regions, like the Delta, with high rates of unemployment. The H-2A program is intended to fill gaps in the workforce where enough local workers are not available. 

“We’re going to make sure this program is run the way it’s supposed to run and that employers are actually doing their due diligence to make sure workers that worked (for farms) in previous seasons are offered their jobs back,” Walsh told Mississippi Today. 

The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division is responsible for investigating labor violations regarding pay and has regional offices across the country. In 2020 and 2021, Walsh said the division had 60 agricultural investigations that recovered $1 million in missing wages to workers. 

A Mississippi Today analysis of DOL data found that of the roughly 400 Mississippi farms  investigated over 15 years, 81% were found to have violated wage regulations. That is about 10% higher than the national rate. 

“I’m no fool,” Walsh added. “I know that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Audrey Hall, the director of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division in Jackson, said her agents are currently investigating several Delta farms though she declined to specify a number. She also said her office hired a new agent based in Greenwood. 

“At a state level we don’t have a Mississippi Department of Labor,” Thompson, the congressman, told the gathered crowd of Delta leaders. “That means if not for the federal government, these gentlemen we have here today would not have anyone to complain to.” 

Thompson thanked Walsh for coming to Mississippi, but also asked for follow through on labor policies to protect Black farm workers. 

Mississippi Today’s investigation found that while the DOL did audit Pitts Farms and others that underpaid Black workers, the audits only spanned two-year time frames. That means they did not cover the full span of time the farms were using H-2A workers. 

Pinkins and others have called for that standard two-year scope to be expanded. In addition, Pinkins and the Mississippi Center for Justice want broader audits done across the Delta to fully capture the extent of racist wage and hiring practices. 

Among the seven Pitts Farms workers at Thursday’s event were Andrew Johnson, brothers Richard and Gregory Strong, and Wesley Reed, all of whom were featured in Mississippi Today’s investigation. All seven men spoke one-on-one with Walsh Thursday morning. 

“It’s June 30, 2022, and this conversation I had in that room a minute ago could have been the same conversation that had happened 50 years ago,” Walsh said following their talk. 

Walsh continued his Mississippi visit by attending a roundtable discussion at Jackson State University. There, he met with Black women leading the state’s union and organizing efforts. 

Hall, the local DOL director, made a few comments before Walsh joined the panel. 

“Sec. Walsh has heard the cry of workers in Mississippi,” she said. 

The room applauded. 

Editor’s note: The Mississippi Center For Justice President and CEO Vangela Wade serves on Mississippi Today’s board of trustees.

The post U.S. Labor Secretary assures Black Delta workers his office will combat racist hiring practices used by white farmers appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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The percentage of same-sex parents in Mississippi is higher than the nation at 25.7% in Mississippi versus 17.2% nationally, according to data from Movement Advancement Project and The Williams Institute. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the percentage of same-sex Mississippi households — with or without children — falls below the national average of 1.5%.

View the data on same-sex parents in the U.S. below. Find the full report on LGBT people in rural America here.

Rural states tend to have more same-sex couples raising a family than urban states, as classified by MAP using Census data. Rural states in the Southern region of the U.S. include:

Percentage of same-sex couples raising children in rural Southern states

• Alabama — 20.4%
• Arkansas — 21.2%
• Georgia — 19.6%
• Kentucky — 18.5%
• Louisiana — 19.9%
• Mississippi — 25.7%
• North Carolina — 18.5%
• Oklahoma — 20.9%
• South Carolina — 18.9%
• Tennessee — 18.1%
• Texas — 19.8%
• Virginia — 16%
• West Virginia — 17.8%

Percentage of same-sex couples raising children in urban Southern states

• Delaware — 15.6%
• Florida — 13.3%
• Maryland — 20.3%
• District of Columbia (D.C.) — 8.7%

Conversely, urban states tend to have higher percentages of same-sex households overall, according to the Census Bureau's most recent data from 2019. There are just under one million same-sex coupled households in the country: 980,276 out of 66 million total coupled households.

Total Same-Sex Coupled Households in the U.S., 2019

Southern states that have a higher percentage of same-sex households than the country are Delaware and Florida, as well as D.C. View the data below:

What questions do you have about LGBTQ+ rights in Mississippi?

The post Data Dive: Same-sex parents in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Children with cystic fibrosis, rare genetic conditions and transplant recipients who receive care at the University of Mississippi Medical Center will now face astronomical medical bills or be forced to get their care elsewhere if they are insured by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi.

Federal law required UMMC, the state’s safety net hospital, to continue honoring in-network rates for certain patients for a 90-day period after it went out of network on April 1 with Blue Cross, the state’s largest private insurer. That required “continuity of care” period expires Friday, putting many adults and children in a tough situation with no timeline of if and when it will end.

Starting then, the hospital will only honor in-network rates for emergency care for patients with Blue Cross.

UMMC spokesperson Marc Rolph said the institution had “no comment” when asked whether any exceptions would be made for certain patients to continue their care at the in-network rate. He also responded “no comment” to questions about the financial losses UMMC has incurred as a result of this dispute and whether there are any updates on the status of mediation with the insurance company. 

Cayla Mangrum, manager of corporate communications at Blue Cross, said they are prohibited from discussing mediation. She did not answer a request for comment on the continuity of care period expiring. 

In the meantime, patients and their families are scrambling to make plans for what’s next.

Three-year-old Emmett Rymer was diagnosed with hydrocephalus while in his mother’s womb and has been seeing doctors at UMMC since before he was even born. He will now be traveling to Baton Rouge to see an entirely new team who will monitor the shunt in his brain and his seizures, his mother Ashton said.

Jett Brown is a 20-month-old who has a rare genetic condition called Pompe disease. His mother Brittany has started the process of transferring his care to LeBonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, a three-hour drive from their home in Madison.

Christy Van, whose 8-year-old son Cooper has cystic fibrosis, is trying to put together the puzzle pieces to keep him at UMMC, the only accredited cystic fibrosis center in Mississippi. She can’t remove him from her husband’s Blue Cross insurance until later this year during open enrollment, and even then it wouldn’t take effect until January. 

Cooper goes to appointments at UMMC at least every three months and often more frequently to see a dietitian who works with him to ensure he’s gaining an adequate amount of weight since gastrointestinal issues can make it difficult.

Trae McWilliams of Yazoo City won’t be able to go to his regular appointment in August with the pediatric craniofacial team at UMMC, the only such team in the state. McWilliams has been seeing those specialists and others at UMMC all 12 years of his life for several conditions, including a submucousal cleft palate, and has undergone five surgeries at the hospital. 

His mother Samantha said she will likely reschedule the appointment for later in the year in hopes that UMMC is back in network with her insurer by then. 

“I would hate to know how much the bill (for that appointment) would cost (out of network) because you’re seeing, like, 14 different specialists at one time,” she said.

Rymer’s mother Ashton said their pediatrician in Natchez has already made the referral to the children’s hospital in Baton Rouge for her son, who has had three brain surgeries at UMMC – including one on the day he was born – and suffers seizures that land him in the hospital for days and require several follow-up appointments.

“Not being able to go (to UMMC) is not only inconvenient but detrimental to his care and his health,” she said. 

Her son is actually doubly insured through both her and her husband’s jobs, both of which are Blue Cross plans. But the thousands they pay each year won’t help him continue his care with his UMMC team.  

Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney has warned Blue Cross it could be violating state law if certain providers like UMMC are out of network to its members. In a March letter to the company’s CEO, he expressed concern specifically about UMMC’s Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the pediatric and adult congenital heart programs, the children’s cancer care program, the sickle cell anemia program and the organ transplant program. 

State law requires health insurance companies to maintain a network of providers that assures “adequacy, accessibility and quality” of care. The law specifies certain services that must be accessible within a certain time and distance of the insured. Blue Cross has maintained it is adequately meeting these requirements even when out of network with UMMC. 

Chaney said he could not comment on specifics regarding the dispute or the status of the mediation between the two parties, but that if he believes insurance members don’t have access to legally required care, he will act.

“We will take some pretty hard-line actions against all the parties on network adequacy,” he told Mississippi Today on Wednesday. 

Jett Brown, who has Pompe disease, sees therapists and a slew of specialists, including a neurogeneticist, at UMMC, which is home to the state’s only children’s hospital. He also receives twice-monthly, $20,000 infusions to ensure he is able to walk, swallow and perform other basic tasks. 

Jett’s mother Brittany Brown squeezed in as many appointments as possible over the last three months in case the contract dispute was not resolved by the continuity of care deadline. Several weeks ago, she received a letter in the mail from UMMC. 

“When the continuing care period ends June 30, 2022, all future care, except for emergency services, provided by UMMC to Blue Cross commercial health plan members will no longer be considered as in-network care, but instead will be out-of-network care,” a June 15 letter from Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs at UMMC, stated. 

Then, in bold: “Therefore, beginning July 1, 2022 with the exception of emergency services, you will be responsible for the full bill for items or services provided by UMMC, less applicable UMMC discounts.” 

Brown knows if Jett continues at UMMC, she’ll have to pay large bills for him to continue seeing his pulmonologist, cardiologist, neurologist and neurogeneticist. She’s still unclear what will happen with his infusions as the UMMC doctor is involved in those but they are administered by a non-UMMC clinic. 

Brown is not aware of any other neurogeneticist in the state, and she knows that if she were to switch him to other specialists, there’s no guarantee those doctors would be familiar with the intricacies of Pompe. 

“We can go to Baptist, and maybe there’s a cardiologist there, but they probably don’t know anything about Pompe. It’s just not the right fit for him,” she said.

She said she’s already spoken to one of Jett’s doctors about transferring his care to LeBonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, a three-hour drive from their home. 

“At this point the doctor’s hands are tied. They don’t have control over that – they’re unhappy about it, too, I’m sure, because they know these kids and they know what to look for and what to ask,” said Brown.

The post For very sick Mississippi children, Blue Cross-UMMC dispute reaches breaking point appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A new report from The Commonwealth Fund ranked Mississippi last in the nation for health system performance. 

The yearly scorecards released by the Fund typically rank Mississippi near the bottom or last across health care access and quality measures, but this year the scorecard also judged how health systems fared during the pandemic.

Among the report’s findings:

• Between August 2020 and March 2022, there were 323 days in which at least 80 percent of ICU beds in Mississippi were occupied. Only Georgia, Rhode Island, Alabama and Texas fared worse by this metric. 
•  Every state has experienced higher-than-expected mortality from all causes due to COVID-19 and the interruptions to routine health care, but Mississippi saw the highest rate of excess deaths in the nation between Feb. 1, 2020 and April 23, 2022. The number of excess deaths varies fivefold across states, from 110 per 100,000 people in Hawaii to 596 per 100,000 in Mississippi. The state saw the highest rates of excess deaths from both COVID-19 and treatable causes like heart disease. 
• Mississippi saw a 55% increase in drug overdose deaths between 2019-2020, the highest in the nation. In 2020, there were more overdose deaths involving opioids than any other substance at 69%. Deaths involving synthetic opioids such as fentanyl accounted for 53% of all overdose deaths. 

Richard Roberson, vice president of state policy and in-house counsel for the Mississippi Hospital Association, said that the failure to expand Medicaid has been a major factor in keeping many Mississippians uninsured and weakening the state’s hospital system.

“The federal government has offered us an option for a decade, and that option is Medicaid expansion,” Roberson said. “If you don’t like that option, then come up with something else. We’ve had a decade to come up with something else, and I haven’t seen leadership on that issue.”

Mississippi is one of 12 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving hundreds of thousands of Mississippians without coverage. Those in the coverage gap make too little to enroll in Medicaid, but too much to qualify for subsidized health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn oppose Medicaid expansion and have long maintained that the state cannot afford the costs despite studies that indicate otherwise.

If Medicaid were expanded, the federal government would cover 90% of the health care costs related to expansion, while Mississippi would have to cover the remaining 10%. Last September, one of Mississippi’s top economists released a study showing that the 10% state match would be more than covered by health care-related savings to the state and new tax revenue generated.

Not only have elected officials failed to offer meaningful alternatives to Medicaid expansion, they haven’t seriously considered the alternatives presented to them, Roberson said.

Roberson points to the Mississippi Cares plan as one example, a provider-sponsored health plan that the Mississippi Hospital Association proposed in 2019. The plan would have extended coverage to Missisippians earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level.

Under the plan, enrollees would have the same benefits as Medicaid enrollees, except for non-emergency transportation services. Dental and vision coverage would be included as well. 

Mississippi Cares would have primarily been paid for through a Medicaid waiver program, with hospitals themselves making up for any excess costs that would have otherwise fallen on the state. Patients would have only paid a $20 monthly fee and $100 copay for certain non-emergency hospital visits. 

Roberson said that Mississippi Cares was never seriously considered by the Legislature.

“‘No’ is not a solution and just sticking your head in the sand doesn’t make it (the problem) go away,” Roberson said. 

In Mississippi, it costs hospitals $1,311 to provide one day of inpatient care according to Kaiser Family Foundation data. This is the lowest cost in the nation, and less than half of the national average, but Roberson said Mississippi’s hospitals don’t bring in enough revenue for the low costs to keep them afloat.

“It doesn’t matter how low your costs are,” Roberson said. “If you can’t have enough revenue to cover your costs, you’re still going to be underwater. So that’s where a lot of our hospitals find themselves.”

Intern Allison Santa-Cruz contributed to this report.

The post Report ranks Mississippi last in the nation for health system performance during pandemic appeared first on Mississippi Today.

On Friday morning, Brooke Jones was at work at Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, performing an ultrasound, when her aunt called – twice. 

“She usually doesn’t call when I’m at work,” Jones, a sonogram and lab tech at the clinic, said. “I called her back when I finished my patient up. She was like, ‘Have you heard? I said, ‘Heard what?’ She said, ‘They overturned it.’”

Jones rushed into the hallway, where her colleagues were gathered. They were sad, she said. It felt like a heavy weight had settled onto their shoulders. They were also confused about what the sudden elimination of a constitutional right would mean for the 20 or so patients already in the building.

“We had to tell the patients, we’re not sure if it’s going to be in effect immediately,” Jones said. “It was really emotional for the first 30 minutes, because we honestly didn’t know what to do.”

The patients were scared, Jones said. One asked if she could have her $150 back. That day, the clinic was packed with people from out of town – some clinics around the country had already stopped offering abortions in anticipation of the ruling. One woman said she had driven six hours and just wanted to know if she would be able to get her pills. 

Then, clinic director Shannon Brewer, who was in New Mexico working on plans to open a new abortion clinic there – dubbed Pink House West – told staff to continue with business as usual. 

The workday resumed, busier and more urgent than ever. Jones helped call patients who were scheduled for July to move their appointments up. They finished the pre-op work and got ready for surgical abortions. When owner Diane Derzis and escorts held a press conference outside, staff tuned in from inside the clinic but kept working, just as they plan to do through at least July 6. 

In some states with laws on the books that banned all or most abortions in the event Roe was overturned, legal abortions ended soon after the ruling was issued on Friday. Louisiana’s three clinics stopped performing abortions almost immediately. The West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa canceled about 100 appointments. One of two abortion clinics in Memphis, which frequently serve patients from northern Mississippi, has stopped providing the service. 

Legal challenges against the trigger bans have now led to the resumption of legal abortion in some places, including Louisiana, at least temporarily. 

But at Mississippi’s only clinic, procedures have continued as normal since the ruling.

The state’s trigger law comes with a 10-day waiting period, which didn’t start until Monday morning, when Attorney General Lynn Fitch certified that Roe v. Wade had been overturned. 

That means that as clinics across the South and Midwest close – if they hadn’t already shut their doors to people seeking abortions – the Pink House stands, at least for a few more days, like a battered island in a rising sea. 

“I will tell you this – any patients who contact us, we will see them,” Derzis said during the press conference. “We will make sure we see them in those 10 days. A woman should not have to leave the state to receive health care.”

On Monday, attorneys for the clinic filed a legal challenge to the trigger law based on a 1998 state Supreme Court ruling that abortion is protected under the Mississippi constitution. If the lawsuit does not result in a delay to the trigger law, the last day of legal abortion in Mississippi will be July 6. 

Until then, tensions outside the clinic are likely to rise, as clinic staff and escorts try to ensure patients can make it to their appointments, while emboldened but frustrated anti-abortion demonstrators aim to stop them.   

“I have done this nine-plus years. I have never been so beat down,” Derenda Hancock, who has coordinated the Pink House Defenders clinic escort program since 2013, said on Tuesday morning. 

Every day the clinic is open, she and other volunteers stand outside in rainbow vests, directing traffic as protesters try to flag down people headed to the clinic and persuade them not to go inside, or yell at them over the fence. Now, they’re staring down the clock for the final time. 

The clinic has added extra shifts, and some days the escorts are spending 11 hours outside, surrounded by the usual protesters and by reporters from around the world. 

At times, the small side street that leads to the clinic’s parking lot has been completely congested, backing up traffic into State Street. Hancock said the Jackson Police Department and Capitol Police have largely ignored escorts’ calls and requests for help maintaining access to the road and clinic, except for when they called to report that Dr. Coleman Boyd, a regular protester outside the clinic, had bumped his vehicle into an escort.

Boyd said he is not convinced he bumped her. 

“It’s been crazy,” Boyd said. “I mean, lots of journalists, which is kind of a pain for everybody cause we’re trying to talk to ladies and it’s just more congestion. There’s cars everywhere in the way. That part just makes it congested for the ladies to get up the street, which is okay by me, but it’s lots more emotion on the street.”

The Jackson Police Department and Capitol Police did not return calls from Mississippi Today.

Jones said that on Friday, patients frantically called the clinic to ask if it was still open. Some of them were confused by protesters outside insisting that the clinic was closed. 

At the press conference Friday, Derzis said the FBI had visited the clinic to discuss concerns about possible violence by supporters of abortion. Nationally, the FBI is investigating “a series of attacks and threats targeting pregnancy resource centers and faith-based organizations across the country,” the Washington Examiner reported earlier this month. None of Mississippi’s nearly 40 crisis pregnancy centers have been affected, according to a list compiled by the organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. 

Stalking, blockades and assaults against abortion providers rose significantly in 2021, a report released in May by the National Abortion Federation found. 

Katie Greenleaf, public affairs officer at the Jackson division of the FBI, declined to answer questions about the FBI’s communication with the clinic.

“The FBI will continue to work with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners to ensure the safety of our communities while respecting individuals’ First Amendment rights,” she said in an email. “Our focus remains on protecting peaceful protestors from those threatening their safety with violence. FBI personnel are assessing intelligence to detect potential threats of violence and are in constant communication with our partners.”

The clinic has hired private security guards to protect patients and staff as they go into the clinic.

On Tuesday morning, one security guard – who asked not to be identified because he had taken time off from his regular job to work at the clinic – said he considers himself “95% against abortion.” 

“But it’s not my body, not my wife, not my child,” he said. “I’m a big believer in giving people space.”

On Saturday, he had spent about 10 hours trying to keep the peace among dozens of people, including anti-abortion protesters who made what he called “disrespectful ethnic statements.” Many of the patients and staff at the clinic are Black women, and the protesters, almost all of whom are white, frequently invoke race. 

“‘How can you be Black security guards around the Black women killing Black babies?” the security guard said he was asked.

“They said to my supervisor– ‘You don’t have a father in your life,’” he said. “I’m like, really? You didn’t ask me a question.” 

Some of the regular protesters at the clinic expressed frustration that Fitch had not immediately certified that Roe had been overturned. 

On Monday morning, Pam Miller and Patty Fultz were praying outside the clinic, which was closed for the day.

“Each day it’s closed, it’s that many fewer babies dying,” Fultz said. 

“Moms are coming from all over,” Miller said. “It just makes me sad that it couldn’t be immediate. Now you’ve got time for people that are already mad to get madder, and act out.” 

In Arkansas and Missouri, state officials certified that Roe had been overturned on Friday.

Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, defended the timing in an email to Mississippi Today. 

“Just as with our work to secure the victory in Dobbs, we were and remain focused on working as expeditiously as possible, but in a correct and orderly way to ensure an enduring victory for life,” Williams wrote. 

Pink House leaders are planning to open the new clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico within a few weeks. Some of the Jackson employees would like to move there to keep working.

At work on Friday, Jones cried, thinking about what the ruling will mean for women in Mississippi and across the country. She thought especially about the teenagers – girls around the age of her youngest sister – who have come to the clinic during her two years working there. 

“If she got pregnant and she didn’t want to keep it, I couldn’t imagine her not being able to have this abortion and continue with her life as a child,” Jones said. “She’s a child. I just could not imagine that.”

She had expected the ruling Friday, and when she dressed for work she put on a T-shirt listing the Supreme Court cases that established and reaffirmed the right to abortion: Roe, Casey, WWH (Whole Women’s Health), June. At the bottom of the list was Jackson, referring to the clinic where she works. Seeing the shirt as she left for work, her aunt told her she must want drama.

“I was like, ‘No, I don’t, I just want to be in support of the clinic,’” she said.

A protester noticed the shirt, too, when she walked past him that day around 8 a.m. 

“He was like, ‘You need to change that shirt and put Dobbs on the end because we’re gonna win,’” she said. “He was right. But I didn’t change the shirt.”

The post ‘I have never been so beat down’: As the clock ticks on legal abortion, tensions rise outside the state’s only clinic appeared first on Mississippi Today.

An unserved arrest warrant in the lynching case of Black teenager Emmett Till nearly 70 years ago has been found in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse. 

The original warrant is for Carolyn Bryant Donham and is dated Aug. 29, 1955. It was found last week by a search group in a file folder in a box in the Leflore County courthouse, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. 

The group that found the warrant included members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation and two of Till’s relatives: Deborah Watts, Till’s cousin, co-founder and leader of foundation, and her daughter, Teri Watts. 

In March, Watts, other family members and supporters visited the Mississippi State Capitol to deliver a petition to state officials and call for Donham to be charged for Till’s lynching. 

“We made a promise to Mamie (Till) that we would persist, and that’s why we’re here today,” Deborah Watts said in March.  

Donham is now in her 80s and most recently lived in North Carolina. 

She is the former wife of Roy Bryant, one of the men who kidnapped and killed Till in the Mississippi Delta in 1955. Till was 14 years old and was visiting family from Chicago when he whistled at Donham inside the store where she was working.  

Donham testified in court Till grabbed her and made unwanted advances toward her. In a 2017 book by Timothy Tyson, Donham said the allegations were false. She later disputed the claim and recanted her story, according to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.  

The U.S. Department of Justice has investigated Till’s case multiple times but did not file additional charges. 

The post Arrest warrant for woman who accused Emmett Till found nearly 67 years later in courthouse basement appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today has compiled a list of questions in regards to abortion in Mississippi after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, and Mississippi’s trigger law banning abortions is set to go into effect in less than 10 days.

We will continue to update this FAQ. Click below to view a specific question.

Jump to a question

What case did the Supreme Court rule on?

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization centers around Mississippi legislation passed and signed in 2018 called “The Act to Prohibit Abortion After 15 Weeks.” That law and an even stricter law that would ban abortion after six weeks were both ruled unconstitutional twice in the last few years — by both a U.S. District Court and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The U.S. Supreme Court in May 2021 decided it would take up Dobbs after meeting 13 times to consider it, a move many legal analysts called unprecedented. This marked the first time since the landmark 1973 abortion rights case Roe v. Wade that the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up a pre-viability ban — a law that prohibits access to abortion based on the amount of time pregnant before the fetus is viable, or around 24 weeks.

READ MORE: U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

How did the court rule?

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that established a person’s right to an abortion.

What were the arguments?

When the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the Dobbs case on Dec. 1, 2021, Chief Justice John Roberts, viewed as the most moderate of the court’s conservative wing, appeared frustrated with what he suggested was a bait-and-switch strategy the state used to transform the case into a challenge to Roe and Casey. Roberts voiced his preference to stick to that narrower question on pre-viability bans, saying “the thing that is at issue before us today is 15 weeks.”

Justice Samuel Alito rejected that position, saying “the only real options we have” are to reaffirm Roe or to overrule it.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote in their dissent that above all others, poor women who cannot afford to seek out an abortion in a state where it remains legal will be harmed by the Court’s ruling.

Is abortion still legal in Mississippi?

Yes, for now. Mississippi is one of 13 states with a trigger law, which Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch certified on Monday. That law, which bans abortion in all cases except where the mother’s life is in danger or a rape that’s been reported to law enforcement, would go into effect 10 days from Monday. But as Mississippi’s trigger law has been discussed in the state and nationwide, no one has taken into account the fact that a 1998 ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court declaring a right to an abortion is granted in the state Constitution.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state’s sole abortion clinic, has filed a lawsuit in Hinds County Chancery Court arguing the trigger law is invalid because of the constitutional right to an abortion spelled out by the state Supreme Court in the 1998 decision.

READ MORE: 1998 state court ruling leads to lawsuit that could prolong Mississippi abortion fight

What is Mississippi’s trigger law and what does it mean for Mississippi?

The law permits abortions only when the mother’s life is at risk or when the pregnancy resulted from a rape that has been reported to law enforcement. The trigger law and fetal heartbeat ban apply to all forms of abortion, including medication abortions that the World Health Organization says can safely end a pregnancy up to 12 weeks.

READ MORE: Fitch certifies Mississippi’s trigger law banning abortion in nearly all cases

Are abortions still being performed in Mississippi?

Yes, but likely not for long. The trigger law takes effect 10 days after the attorney general issues a determination that Roe has been overturned. For the first time in 50 years, it will be nearly impossible to obtain a legal abortion in the state of Mississippi.

READ MORE: Mississippi abortion clinic plans to provide services as long as law allows

What’s next in the legal battle?

An all but forgotten 1998 ruling by the state Supreme Court declaring a right to an abortion is granted in the state Constitution could prolong the fight over abortion in Mississippi despite last week’s landmark decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization has filed a lawsuit in Hinds County Chancery Court arguing the trigger law is invalid because of the constitutional right to an abortion spelled out by the state Supreme Court in the 1998 decision. Because all four Hinds County judges recused themselves from the case, the state Supreme Court will likely appoint a special judge to hear it.

Who typically gets abortions in Mississippi?

About 5,000 Mississippians had an abortion in 2020, according to the Mississippi Department of Health.

The rate of abortions in Mississippi was 4.3 abortions occurring in the state per 1,000 reproductive-age women in 2017– one of the lowest in the country. But the rate of Mississippians receiving abortions was 8.3 per 1,000 reproductive-age women, according to the Guttmacher Institute, indicating that many Mississippians have already been seeking abortions out of state. (The national rate was 11.4 per 1,000 reproductive-age women in 2019.)

READ MORE: Who gets abortions in Mississippi?

What will happen to Mississippi’s only abortion clinic?

Diane Derzis, the owner of Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, the facility at the center of the Dobbs case, has said it will close. She plans to open a new clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico, about an hour from El Paso.

Are medication abortions — or abortion pills — legal in Mississippi?

The trigger law and fetal heartbeat ban apply to all forms of abortion, including medication abortions that the World Health Organization says can safely end a pregnancy up to 12 weeks.

But reproductive rights advocates and many legal experts say it will be nearly impossible to keep medication abortion out of the state, given that state police can’t search people’s mail. Local abortion rights activists vow to help maintain access to the pills. Medication abortions already accounted for the majority of abortions performed at Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

READ MORE: What does abortion look like in Mississippi now?

Where will be the closest place to obtain a legal abortion?

For many Mississippians, the closest place to obtain a legal abortion will be southern Illinois. Every neighboring state is also set to ban abortion in almost all cases.

Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, a clinic that is more accessible for many north Mississippians than the Jackson clinic, has announced plans to set up a new location in Carbondale, Illinois – a six-hour drive from Jackson.

What are lawmakers in Mississippi doing to address that state’s infant mortality rate, the highest in the country, and the state’s high maternal mortality rate?

Republican leaders have offered few proposals to address the state’s abysmal infant and maternal health outcomes. This year, Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, killed a Republican-led proposal to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months after childbirth.

The Legislature recently passed a bill that will provide a $3.5 million tax credit for crisis pregnancy centers, loosely regulated nonprofits that offer counseling and resources for pregnant women but which sometimes peddle inaccurate information about abortion.

Gov. Tate Reeves has not responded to questions about how much money his administration would invest to support extending postpartum Medicaid coverage for new moms – a measure that died in the Legislature this year. About 60% of pregnant women in Mississippi are on Medicaid.

In early June 2022, though, the governor published an op-ed titled “The New Pro-Life Agenda,” declaring that the pro-life movement must be more than anti-abortion. Almost no specifics on policy and funding proposals were mentioned. He wrote that his office has spent the past five months analyzing “our state’s laws and regulations in order to identify any possible existing rules that might present an obstacle to expectant mothers.” His office did not answer questions about what the review had found, and Mississippi Today is still waiting for the office to fulfill a public records request for that documentation.

Reeves, along with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, praised last week’s SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but also said that now it means mothers, children and families will need more resources.

On Monday, Hosemann announce the “Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families,” a nine-member committee tasked with making recommendations to the Legislature on policies pertaining to families and children from birth to 3 years old. Gunn announced last Friday the “Speaker’s Commission on the Sanctity of Life” to examine issues and policies affecting mothers and children.

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READ MORE: The state fighting to dismantle abortion rights has a long history of permissive abortion laws

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