26 MOTHER JONES |^ SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019
Her day began at 3 a.m., with a text
from Laurie Bertram Roberts. Roberts
helms the Mississippi Reproductive Free-
dom Fund, the nonprofit that was helping
Kate get her abortion. Around 7:45 a.m.,
a white medical transport van arrived
at her apartment, and Kate climbed in
to join two of Roberts’ daughters, Sarah
and Aolani, as well as Roberts’ partner,
who was driving but did not want to be
named. The crew journeyed northwest,through Mississippi, then Tennessee,
then Arkansas. Traffic on the interstate
slowed them down; by the time they
made it for her 10:45 a.m. appointment,
it was nearly noon.
Tired and dusty—the van’s air con-
ditioning was broken, so the windows
stayed down—the foursome stepped out
into the humid Arkansas air. About 15
protesters hemmed in the clinic, and Kate
kept her head down as a man bellowedthat God would not judge her, if only she
would turn around. Another protester,
a woman with an infant, shrieked that
Kate should carry to term and give the
baby to her. It was that image—the baby
nestled in the stroller, in the edge-of-
June heat—that Kate says was seared
into her mind the rest of the day.
After rushing into the clinic cocooned
by her companions, Kate faced the
metal detector, putting her wallet in a
dish. The strict security was jarring the
first time she visited, even though it’s
pretty typical in clinics. Still, she
couldn’t bring herself to unclasp the vin-
tage necklace she almost never takes off;
she breathed a sigh of relief when it
didn’t trigger the alarm. Her cellphone
was left in the van—another security
measure, meant to protect patient pri-
vacy and stymie anti-abortion activists
who pose as patients and film inside
clinics—making her feel even more
alone. She hadn’t told her mother, who
was battling a serious illness, about her
pregnancy, or her new boyfriend. Just
about everyone she had told was in the
clinic with her.“My one goal, as
pathetic as it sounds,
was do not walk across
that stage pregnant,”
Kate says. “Everything
I worked for...I’m
going to remember
graduating and being
pregnant.”“I would drink bleach right now.”
Kate shakes her head, and her long, sun-streaked brown hair, piled high in
a messy bun, shivers. “That’s so bad, and I don’t mean it,” she quickly adds.
She’s exhausted; shadowy crescents frame her bright eyes. Just a few
weeks ago, she graduated from the University of Mississippi. “My one
goal, as pathetic as it sounds, was do not walk across that stage preg-
nant,” she says. “Everything I worked for...I’m going to remember grad-
uating and being pregnant.” Kate has been trying to get an abortion
since March. It’s a Friday evening at the end of May, and she was just
turned away from an Arkansas clinic, about 200 miles from home.
In the morning, she’ll have to go back home to Oxford, Mississippi,
where she’ll wait yet another week, and return to the clinic in Little
Rock for the third and hopefully final time.