SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019 | MOTHER JONES 29seems to have hit it off with these guys.
A day or two prior, the subject of con-
doms came up when she was talking with
them, as it tends to around Roberts, and
soon enough she was using a wooden
penis to demonstrate how to properly put
one on. She says the men left that day
with a generous bag of free condoms.
“I’m very plainspoken about sex,” she
says, shrugging.
Roberts is actually plainspoken about
almost everything—she doesn’t much
care for bullshit, and she’s not afraid to
let you know it. She knows firsthand
there are worse things than appearing
abrasive: like being denied an abortion
when your back is against a wall. Like
nearly dying in a Catholic hospital
because the doctor is more interested
in saving the fetus than the woman with
children at home. Like being a low-
income woman of color in a state with
a long record of denying the humanity
of those who look like you. All of these
factors, all this personal history, contrib-
ute to why she’s doing this work and why
it is messy and frenzied—such is the life
of someone who lives with the odds
stacked against them, and such are the
lives of those who come to her for help.
“We’re all poor women and femmes
and people of color, for the most part.
We have a couple of low-income queer
white folks working for us,” she says. “To
be part of our leadership, you have to be
a low-income or working-class person,
period. We’re not apologetic about that
at all, and we’re unapologetically black as
fuck. You can either rock with it or kick
rocks, we don’t care.”
That’s a revolutionary attitude for Mis-
sissippi, the state with the second-highest
poverty rate in the nation, where, in many
ways, post-Roe America is already a real-
ity. In a study of 47 states there were 11.8
abortions per 1,000 women of reproduc-
tive age in 2015, but in Mississippi there
were just 7.8. Even so, a year earlier an esti-
mated 47 percent of all pregnancies in the
state were unintended, while nationally it
was 41 percent. Also, in 2017, Mississippi’s
birthrate among 15- to 19-year-olds was 65
percent higher than the national average.
In recent years, the state has twice
attempted to place a severe gestational
limit on abortion—first, a 2018 law thatwould have banned abortions after 15
weeks, and this past May, another law
that would have banned abortions after
six weeks. The measures were signed
by Gov. Phil Bryant, who famously said
his “goal is to end abortion” in Missis-
sippi, but a federal judge struck down
or blocked the laws.
The Jackson clinic’s capacity has been
slowly whittled down by an onslaught
of legislative attacks—it’s now only
open three days a week. It is required
to meet the onerous standards of an
ambulatory surgical center. The state
mandates every patient undergo med-
ically inaccurate counseling and be sub-
jected to an ultrasound and a 24-hour
waiting period, which means two sep-
arate trips to the clinic. Nearly half of
Mississippians seeking abortion care
travel out of state to get it, but even
then, its neighbors in the Bible Belt
aren’t much better off. While Tennessee
has seven clinics operating as of re-
cently, Alabama and Louisiana have just
three each, and Arkansas was down to
two this summer. These states feature
a patchwork of Targeted Regulation of
Abortion Providers (trap) laws, policies
aimed at limiting access to abortion
care through seemingly harmless
provisions aboutTRUMP ON ABORTION,
IN HIS OWN WORDS
1999: “I am pro-choice in every
respect and as far as it goes.”
2000: “I support a woman’s right
to choose...but I am uncomfortable
with the procedures.”
2011: “I am pro-life.”
2015: “With caveats, life of the
mother, incest, and rape...So I’m
pro-life, but with the caveats.”
2016 : “There has to be some form
of punishment [for women who
get abortions].”2019: “The baby is born. The
mother meets with the doctor.
They take care of the baby. They
wrap the baby beautifully. And
then the doctor and the mother
determine whether or not they
will execute the baby.” (This does
not actually happen.)(continued on page 60)