774: The Pink House at the Center of the World

Ira Glass

OK. So Brown v. Board of Education, huge Supreme Court case, 1954, desegregates public schools in America, and Brown is Oliver L. Brown, a welder for the railroads and assistant pastor. It was actually 13 parents who brought the lawsuit, but he's the only one whose name is on it, not because he's first alphabetically.

People think maybe the lawyers picked him because he's the only dad on the list. All the other parents are moms. 1973, Roe v. Wade. Roe is Jane Roe, real name Norma McCorvey, working as a carnival barker, gets pregnant. She's already had two babies, girls, who other people were raising. She didn't want to go through that a third time.

At a bar one night, someone tells her that there's this thing called an abortion. Norma tries to get one, but can't-- it's illegal-- and finally signs up as the plaintiff for the lawsuit, she says, because it's the only way she can find to get the abortion she wants.

This year, the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the plaintiff is an abortion clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, the Jackson Women's Health Organization. And on the day the clinic lost and Roe was overturned, that's where we wanted to be, with the people whose case was making history on the day history was made.

For over a decade, the clinic has been the only abortion clinic in Mississippi. Many of their clients drive from hours away. Small building, mint green roof, unmissable, super bright pink exterior, like the building is saying, yeah, we're here, deal with it.

Recently, they haven't allowed press inside to record, but we teamed up with a filmmaker, Maisie Crow, who filmed in the clinic starting in 2012 for a great and very nuanced movie that she made about abortion in Mississippi, and is back there now shooting another film. She was the only journalist who was allowed to be there that day, and she brought us along to witness and record these moments that no one else has seen or reported on until now.

What we've made up all this, and what we have for you today, is a special episode of our show. It is This American Life, by the way, from WBEZ Chicago. I'm Ira Glass, and what we're going to do is we're going to start at the Mississippi clinic. That's basically the crash site for this massive cultural, political boulder that just landed in all of our lives with this Supreme Court decision.

And then, after that, we're going to head out from the clinic, move up into Illinois, and then further out to Missouri and Texas, places and people who were hit by the shockwave of that impact in various ways. Stay with us.

Maisie Crow

I'm Maisie Crow. This is Act One, The Pink House at the Center of the World. The people who work in the Pink House at the corner of Fondren and State Street have known for a while history was coming for them. They just didn't know the exact date or what they'd do in the clinic on the day it happened. Would they immediately have to cancel patients? What would they say to people? Where would they go?

We begin this story a couple of days before the Supreme Court decision on a Wednesday night. Because their days are so busy and full, this was the first time they sat down to really discuss what to do as a group if Roe were overturned. The director of the clinic, Shannon Brewer, gathered her staff in the waiting room at the end of the workday after patients had gone home.

This kind of meeting with everybody together, they're not all that common at the clinic. Everybody's just too busy. So it felt serious.

Maisie Crow

Shannon has worked at the Jackson clinic for more than two decades. She started out at the bottom, a scrub tech sterilizing instruments. She needed a job. She had six kids, all little, and she came to the field kind of randomly. Her aunt worked at the clinic and brought her in. Shannon was 29 back then. Now she's 50 and the leader.

Maisie Crow

There's just a small staff at the clinic, very family-like, very interconnected. Shannon's sister works here. Shannon's become kind of known nationally for keeping this place open. Like, last year, she went to the White House to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Pretty much ever since she started, and even before she started, people have been trying to shut the Pink House down. They've tried everything. The state has buried them in regulations, wrestled them in David-and-Goliath-sized court cases. No matter what was thrown at the Pink House-- and that's what everybody calls it-- it was unshuttable. It would not stop, just like Shannon Brewer.

Maisie Crow

She's rarely fazed by anything, talks to herself while she works. I've seen her be really kind to patients while she's also explaining the harsh reality that they're too far along to get an abortion in Mississippi and that they'll have to go to another state.

Her office is set up for warm, fuzzy vibes, inspirational sayings up everywhere, things like "Sometimes life's about risking it all for a dream nobody can see but you." There's also a big video monitor with feeds from the security cameras all over the building. I've never been in her office when her eyes aren't darting to the screen every few seconds.

Maisie Crow

That's my producer, Miki.

Maisie Crow

These days, even with the entire world looking at her, Shannon was coping OK. She had this moment during the oral arguments of the Supreme Court case. She got to DC, and all she saw were anti-abortion activists and protesters and politicians everywhere cheering on the other side. Very few people showed up for her. She felt very alone.

She says she's not surprised at all by where we're at right now. So while many people are freaking out about Roe being overturned, Shannon says she's hardened to it.

Maisie Crow

In that staff meeting they had two days before the Roe decision, people were nervous, asking questions about what would happen once it came down.

Maisie Crow

Shannon didn't know because no one knew. What she did know, what they all knew, was that the decision coming down would mean the end of their jobs at the Pink House and the end of the Pink House itself. Most importantly, it meant that all the patients who needed them would be stranded. The next closest clinic is three states away in Illinois.

After most of the questions petered out, the youngest member of the staff, Molly, asked a question. She hadn't talked yet, but she'd been sitting in a chair across from Shannon, nodding along as she spoke, hyper concentrating on Shannon's face as she tried to absorb it all.

Maisie Crow

The staff, who, in good times is, chatty, laughy, was oddly quiet in the room, everyone just looking at Shannon. All these other clinics around the country under the same threat were already shutting their doors. Even though the decision hadn't come down yet, they had decided it was over. South Dakota, Oklahoma, those clinics were planning the end. But Shannon was expanding.

Shannon had decided that if the state was going to close the Pink House in Jackson, Mississippi, she was going to help open a new Pink House west in New Mexico. It was within driving distance of Mississippi, a long drive, 15 hours, but still, she hoped she could open the doors in that clinic the day the doors in this one closed. At this meeting, she told her staff, I'm going out to get the new clinic ready. You stay here and keep going.

Maisie Crow

Keep going until the last possible moment of the last possible day. That's what they'd been doing for almost 30 years. That's what they'd keep doing.

Maisie Crow

The staff left. Shannon walked back to her office and just sat there.

Maisie Crow

I've known Shannon for years, spent hundreds of hours with her. She rarely cracks. She doesn't often show emotion.

Maisie Crow

I watched as wave after wave of realization hit Shannon in real time.

Maisie Crow

Two days later, outside the clinic, Friday, what ended up being the day the Supreme Court handed down the decision. It started off like a normal day. Protesters lined the street, screaming at staff, screaming at patients. The protesters today are the same as usual, mostly all men, mostly all white.

A man gets up on a ladder with a bullhorn, leans down over the pink stucco wall of the clinic, shouting Bible verses about damnation. The people who manage this scene are called the Pink House defenders. Their job is to guide patients safely inside the clinic and shield them from the protesters.

The protesters scream murderer at patients, and the defenders blast music on speakers to drown them out. They don't want the patients to have to hear all the yelling. Their playlist, inexplicably '90s alt rock, Smashing Pumpkins, Toad the Wet Sprocket. Today, it's Tom Petty.

[MUSIC - TOM PETTY, "I WON'T BACK DOWN"]

Maisie Crow

The defenders are led by Derenda Hancock. She's 63, a wiry blonde, who managed restaurants for decades and now waits tables at a chain steakhouse. She'll as quickly yell go fuck yourself to a protester as she'll whisper, right this way, baby girl, to a patient.

For 10 years, she's posted herself outside in front of the Pink House, not for money. All the defenders do it for free. Derenda's been here since 4:45 AM. Her usual is 6:45, but the protesters have been starting early this week, and she does not like them to get here before her, ever.

Maisie Crow

Just after 9:00, the news from the Supreme Court comes down. Derenda speed walks into the clinic.

Maisie Crow

They go past the reception desk, down the hallway, a small cluster of staff keeping their voices low so they don't alarm the patients.

Maisie Crow

They hug.

Maisie Crow

Don't let them see you like that, someone tells Derenda.

Maisie Crow

This is the entire conversation. They give themselves precisely 49 seconds for all of it. Then Derenda heads for the door. She has to get her team together to deal with the crowd of protesters and press.

Maisie Crow

Strong Derenda, someone yells behind her. As the door closes, she turns around and shouts back.

Maisie Crow

Protesters are trying to block the driveway to the clinic.

Maisie Crow

For a few seconds, as Derenda slips out the door, the noise from outside pours in. And then the doors close, shoving the world back outside for the staff to figure out what to do now.

Maisie Crow

The staff members collect themselves immediately and get back to answering the calls. The phones are backing up, ringing constantly, the lights blinking non-stop on all the office lines.

Maisie Crow

Women calling, wanting abortions, wanting to know, can you still help me, can you get me in, looking for any clinic still open in the Southern half of the country.

Maisie Crow

Any staff member who can is grabbing calls.

Maisie Crow

All day, people are asking, so if I can't get an abortion in Mississippi, what should I do?

Maisie Crow

With Shannon in New Mexico opening Pink House West, her sister Nita takes charge.

Maisie Crow

Like everyone else, Nita's answering the phones.

Maisie Crow

People ask, if there's no more abortion, what am I supposed to do? One caller asked, can I get my tubes tied?

Maisie Crow

This is the sound of Roe ending. All day long, the phones never let up.

Maisie Crow

Before long, they come up with a new plan. I'll tell you more later in the hour.

Zoe Chace

This is Zoe Chace with Act 2. Welcome to Illinois, Abortion Oasis.

Zoe Chace

500 miles away from Jackson, in Fairview Heights, Illinois, there's this big building, a sparkling new abortion complex, a mega clinic made for the post Roe world. Planned Parenthood decided they needed to build a place where everyone coming from all the other places could go, the Mississippis, the Texases, Oklahoma, Missouri. St. Louis is just across the river.

I was there a couple of weeks ago. It's 18,000 square feet, a maze of bright hallways and procedure rooms and counseling rooms and the innocuously-named, but very important, Regional Logistics Center. That's where Carolyn Sheryll works.

Zoe Chace

Carolyn's job is to get people to this huge clinic for an abortion and connect them to what they need in order to do that, mostly money. She's from St. Louis. She has neon yellow nails that click loudly. She types fast.

She's got this little sign up right in her line of vision that says, "Stand with Black women," and that's why she does this job, she says, to help young women like herself. She's warm when you meet her, but on the phone, she has this impersonal customer service voice. There's a lot of forms and information she needs to get through.

Zoe Chace

The woman on the phone, who is from Tennessee, tells Carolyn she wants a surgical abortion.

Zoe Chace

She says she only has $100. Carolyn's computer program can instantly tap into abortion funds from all over the country. It'll take $100 from the National Abortion Federation, $75 from the Chicago abortion fund, and automatically apply that to the patient's balance. On this call, she also tabs over and squares pop-up with the names of all the states. She clicks Tennessee to find the local abortion fund.

Zoe Chace

Last year, Carolyn was working at Planned Parenthood as just an appointment booker. There was no Regional Logistics Center yet, no place which found financial support for travel and stuff. Carolyn's only job was scheduling the appointments, the date and time that people should show up, which was stressful.

Zoe Chace

Like this patient who just drove down from Michigan, who was there in the waiting room just down the hall. Carolyn got an urgent message about her from the staff at the front desk.

Zoe Chace

The woman is 25 weeks pregnant, right on the line of what is allowed, and had just driven over 500 miles. She'd showed up with $1,500, not nearly enough for that procedure, which is about $5,000, because it's a complicated procedure at that point. It can take two to three days. So if the woman doesn't get the rest of the money like right then, her window snaps shut.

Zoe Chace

Carolyn hangs up. We could have paid for her hotel, she's saying, shaking her head, then she'd have that extra $400.

Zoe Chace

I was told this new abortion complex might have to go from eight hours of patient care a day to 10 hours, and then probably 12. Already, one doctor on site sees around nine patients an hour. That's how fast an abortion can be, as little as three minutes, and it's over. They're projecting 14,000 new patients in the next year coming to Southern Illinois from nearby states.

Zoe Chace

Which brings me to Act 3, The Abortion Desert Across the River. On June 24, the day Roe was overturned, I was in St. Louis, Missouri. I drove to meet a Missouri State representative named Mary Elizabeth Coleman. Mary Elizabeth Coleman has been running at abortion for years. She never stops running.

Practically, the moment she got to the statehouse, she was helping to write a heartbeat bill. That bill included the trigger ban that ended abortion in the state of Missouri. In the last few months, she's been getting a lot of attention for this strategy that she came up with to attack the mega clinic Planned Parenthood built in Illinois.

Mary Elizabeth wrote a bill that would punish people who helped someone in Missouri cross state lines to get an abortion. The bill didn't go anywhere, but it's getting a lot of attention right now. Lots of people are talking about state lines as the next frontier in the fight against abortion.

The day Roe fell, Mary Elizabeth told me to meet her at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, closest Catholic Church, just down the street, to the last abortion clinic in Missouri.

Zoe Chace

She's come to this church many times to pray for the end of abortion in their Adoration Chapel, the special place in the church where Catholics believe God is literally present. We were whispering just outside the doorway. This moment she'd been working her whole life for felt so heavy.

Zoe Chace

Alongside these feelings, she says, is worry. She's thinking about the response, the way people are going to react to what happened, what that's going to look like, what that's going to feel like.

The day Roe fell also happened to be the feast day celebrating the birth of Saint John the Baptist, the guy known for preparing the way for Jesus and baptizing him in the Bible. It's traditionally celebrated with a bonfire. Mary Elizabeth and 60 of her closest friends gathered at her house that night with her parish priest.

Zoe Chace

It was drinks, chips, prayer, s'mores.

Zoe Chace

It's not like shouts of victory here. It's more like nudging each other. Can you believe it?

Zoe Chace

You can't overstate what a big day this is for pro-life Catholics. This has been a long fight for some of them. Here they were, reminiscing about how many Marches for Life they've been on.

Zoe Chace

Chris, Mary Elizabeth's husband, gathers everyone out back.

Zoe Chace

Saint John the Baptist's story starts with something called The Visitation. While she's pregnant, Mary goes to see her cousin Elizabeth, who's also pregnant. Upon seeing Mary, Elizabeth feels her child leap in her womb, recognizing Jesus, the Savior, in Mary's womb. Elizabeth basically says, Mary, your pregnancy is going to turn out great. Mary Elizabeth. This story from the Bible is her namesake.

Zoe Chace

The bonfire burned out. The night went late. Mary Elizabeth told me she went to bed with this bracing feeling, holding her breath, some relief, but also dread, she said, about what happens next.

Ira Glass

This is Act 4, Next. What happens next is a subject for so many pro-life lawmakers, who spent years, like Mary Elizabeth, hoping to get to this point and overturn Roe. I should say that throughout today's program, we're using the terms for people on each side of this issue that they choose themselves-- like pro-life.

I've talked to a few of these lawmakers, and opinions really are all over the place. There's no consensus on how to proceed, just a general sense that the courts and Supreme Court seem to be on their side. And so there's no telling how far they're going to be able to go right now. Like, for example, here's one of the biggest questions out there that lawmakers in the movement do not agree on.

The question is, should states that ban abortion try to do anything about all the people who are going to cross state lines to get abortions in clinics like the one in Illinois that Zoe visited. What can they do? The Thomas More Society, this conservative nonprofit, has put together model legislation on this. They are one of a handful of outfits throwing out legal strategies right now. Peter Breen is their Vice President and senior counsel.

Ira Glass

Would the courts agree with him? That is totally unclear. It raises complicated legal questions, and other pro-life legislators and legal thinkers do not think this is a slam dunk at all. But strategists are floating all sorts of ideas like this right now, and nobody knows which of those laws are going to hold up in court.

And in the coming months and years, we're going to be seeing all kinds of state laws using all kinds of tactics like these to try to crack down on abortion. I was interested to talk to somebody in the movement who is sorting through those ideas, trying to figure out what might work best right down, to hear how they're weighing the pros and cons of various approaches. And I went to one of the most forward looking, John Seago, President of Texas Right to Life.

Last year, Texas jumped to the front of the legal battle over abortion in our country when it passed the so-called Heartbeat Act, SB 8. That's the law that said that anyone in Texas, any private individual, could sue anybody who performs an abortion or anybody who even just helps someone get an abortion starting around six weeks after gestation.

Seago helped shepherd that bill to passage. It's been widely imitated across the country. Seago's been talking to legislators and thinking a lot about what they should do next. And, for starters, he's somebody who does not think they should try to stop women from crossing state lines to get abortions.

Ira Glass

That means, Seago says, not going after somebody who crosses state lines for an abortion, or people, or organizations who help them do it, or advertising that lets people know about abortion clinics in other states. Instead, John Seago says the movement in his state, Texas, should be focusing on making Texas a more hospitable place to keep and raise a baby with more support for mothers.

This is something I heard from other pro-life politicians around the country. Seago says another thing they have to do now that abortion is banned in so many states, they have to make sure the bans are enforced.

Ira Glass

What he's talking about is district attorneys in Texas counties that contain Dallas, and Austin, and San Antonio, and Corpus Christi, also Fort Bend County on the outskirts of Houston. All these district attorneys joining over 80 prosecutors around the country in saying they will not prosecute doctors who continue to do abortions.

Ira Glass

For instance, they could authorize the Texas Attorney General to prosecute those cases or have DAs from nearby counties do it. But the best solution, Seago thinks, is to beef up what they did in the Texas abortion law and give private citizens more power to sue any doctor who they think is still performing abortions.

This, by the way, is also the approach recommended by the National Right to Life Committee. That's the national group that Texas Right to Life is affiliated with. They've drafted model legislation for states to adopt that would make it possible to prosecute anybody helping someone get an abortion in a state that's banned it by authorizing attorneys general to prosecute if local district attorneys don't want to do it and by giving citizens the power to sue anybody they think is breaking the law.

Specifically, the draft legislation would give the father and the grandparents of the unborn child the ability to sue for compensatory and punitive damages if there's an illegal abortion. And if the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, the father of the unborn child would not be able to sue for damages, but the way the draft law is written, his parents could.

Ira Glass

But he says they're still figuring all this out. It's really not clear what's going to work. One promising option, he says, is to give the Texas Attorney General more power to prosecute companies overseas that are sending these abortion pills into Texas and to make it possible for private citizens to sue them as well, which, he hopes, will drag those companies into court in Texas to slow them down or stop them.

Ira Glass

So in the long run, Seago says that he wants to end abortion in every state. He says if you really believe that life begins at conception, you have an obligation to try to stop abortion everywhere.

But in the short run, in the next legislative session in Texas, his goal is to pass laws that will help enforce the abortion ban in their state and go after abortion pills and whoever is sending them into Texas, somehow.

Rebecca Grant

I'm reporter Rebecca Grant, and this is Act 5, The Pill Smuggler.

Rebecca Grant

This is Stephanie. Stephanie is in her 60s. She's a white lady, lives in a Southern red state, and what she's getting away with is this. She gets shipments of abortion pills from Mexico and India.

Then she mails them out to people who can't get an abortion at a clinic. There's no prescription involved, no doctors or nurses. The people who get the packages will take the pills and do their abortion at home. The lingo for this is self-managed abortion.

Stephanie, by the way, is not her real name, and this is not her real voice. We had an actor copy what she said as closely as possible to protect her identity. Stephanie runs this underground operation out of her bedroom.

When she gets a new shipment of pills, she puts on a pair of latex gloves, spreads out all her supplies on top of her king-size bed and divvies them up into little plastic baggies while she watches MSNBC. She loves Rachel Maddow.

Rebecca Grant

She showed me some of the pills.

Rebecca Grant

In the last shipment, she received 50 mifepristone pills, miffys.

Rebecca Grant

And over 1,000 misoprostol pills, misos. If all these pills were getting prescribed in a clinic, it would add up to about $30,000. She has generic versions. They're just as safe and effective.

Rebecca Grant

Stephanie has sent pills to hundreds of people. She fields requests through an encrypted email address. To send the pills, she stuffs them into bubble mailers from the dollar store along with a QR code that links to information about how to use them and the medical risks, which are few. Then, by hand, she writes out a random return address so that the package can never be traced back to her. She holds up a package to show me and my producer Aviva.

Rebecca Grant

Stephanie, to be clear, is not a medical professional, and she's definitely not supposed to be distributing medication, though she has no idea what the punishment would be if she got caught.

Rebecca Grant

Stephanie technically retired a few years ago, but she's one of those people who can't sit still. She describes herself as a doer. And so she started working with this nonprofit that helps people access abortions, and she felt relieved every time she could help a client MacGyver a way around the obstacles. But sometimes there are obstacles that couldn't be overcome, at least not without moving mountains.

And Stephanie realized that sending people pills to take it home was a solution. This way, they wouldn't have to come up with the money or figure out child care or travel hundreds of miles to a clinic. And, unlike the websites that sell these pills, they wouldn't need a credit card. It could really help people without an ID or a bank account or who were running out of time.

So she decided to build out a shadow arm of her operation, all underground. When the nonprofit can't figure out another way to help someone, they give them Stephanie's encrypted email. There are actually people all over the country who do what Stephanie does, but no one really talks about it, even with each other.

Rebecca Grant

Stephanie is obsessive about covering her tracks, but she can't control everything, like this one time at the post office. She goes there every day to pick up the above board mail for her nonprofit, all the bills, the donations, that kind of thing. But a couple of years ago, somebody sent a package of abortion pills there that was meant for the shadow side. Stephanie assumed no one at the post office would notice or care.

Rebecca Grant

Stephanie tried to stay calm on the phone, but inside, she was freaking out. She's not really sure why, but the case didn't end up going anywhere. Maybe it was because her name wasn't on the package. After that, Stephanie made sure she never got abortion pills at that post office, but she still gets all her legal, boring nonprofit mail there, and she knows the same clerk is going to handle it.

Rebecca Grant

Stephanie knows that a crackdown on self-managed medication abortion is coming, and she worries that someone could try to prosecute her for aiding and abetting an abortion, even for being an accessory to murder. But Stephanie is hopeful that those kinds of laws will be difficult to actually enforce. There are just too many people sending too many pills in nondescript envelopes through the mail. It would be impossible to intercept every one.

Rebecca Grant

Stephanie is optimistic, but she still prepares for the worst. Every day, she wakes up early. She showers, does her hair and makeup, and gets dressed so she's presentable just in case the police show up to arrest her.

Ira Glass

Coming up, scrambling to get ready for all the babies that are coming now that Roe is gone. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, The Pink House at the Center of the World. If you're just tuning in, we began today at the Mississippi clinic that was in the middle of the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe versus Wade. And then, from there, we headed out to other places shaken by this seismic change in our country. So far, we have been to Illinois, Missouri, Texas, and in this part of our show, we now head back to the state we started.

Emma Green

I'm Emma Green. This is Act 6, The Babies. Babies are coming. No one knows exactly how many, thousands, tens of thousands. The pro-life movement has spent so long trying to get these babies here, to make abortion illegal, unthinkable, and now the movement has declared its next mission. They have to take care of these women. They have to take care of these babies.

In Mississippi, Anja Baker is the woman running point on all these babies. She's this super intense 27-year-old who's been fully dedicated to the pro-life movement since she was 15. Her dad's white. Her mom's Mexican-American. She's a Catholic convert.

On her left shoulder, she's got a tattoo of a giant white rose, a tribute to a German woman who resisted the Nazis. On the top of her right foot, she's got another tattoo of these tiny little footprints the size of a 22-week-old's, about the youngest age a baby can survive being born.

I met up with Anja in Jackson. She took me on a tour of the post Roe world that she hopes to build.

Anja works for a national pro-life group called Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. More than any other organization, they can take credit for this moment, for the careful political strategy that led to Roe falling. And now, they want to help all these babies, but they're not quite ready.

For example, Anja's job is to create this online directory for Mississippi, a website of every kind of resource a new mom and baby might need, everything from diapers and formula to addiction treatment and housing help.

She doesn't include anyone, therapists, OB-GYNs, any organization who might help a woman get an abortion. I followed Anja around just four days before Roe got overturned, and her directory was still a draft. The goal eventually is to have a version of this in all 50 states. Right now, two are live.

Emma Green

The first stop on our tour was a church that was stockpiling donated baby stuff.

Emma Green

Next, we visited these two pro-life activists in Jackson who brainstormed with Anja how to get more churches activated to join Anja's mission, to do more practical stuff to help women.

Emma Green

One of them, Monica, mentioned she's one of the few Black women who protests outside the Pink House, the abortion clinic in Jackson.

Emma Green

Anja's excited to talk to Monica, in part because she wants the pro-life movement to reach more Black women.

Emma Green

Anja is a fix-it kind of gal, and, to her, the task ahead seemed straightforward. There were 3,559 abortions in Mississippi in 2020. She interprets this like a lot of other pro-lifers do, that the only reason these abortions happened was because women felt powerless, like they had no other option.

Emma Green

This, meaning some practical resource.

Emma Green

Anja is the kind of person who is looking forward to having kids. But even then, the reality of it has been complicated. She's a youngish mom with two sons, a toddler and a 14-month-old with special needs.

Her younger son Herschel needs to be nursed every four hours and can't sit up on his own. So any time Anja has to travel for work, like today, she needs to bring along a whole entourage of caretakers. Over the course of the day, we meet a baby sitter, Katie, Anja's mom, Cecilia, and her husband Nate, who holds Herschey and pats him on the back as we head from one meeting to the next.

Emma Green

Nate follows in his white Jetta with Herschey as we drive an hour and a half out to Meridian, Mississippi to a place called the Center for Pregnancy Choices.

Emma Green

It's a pregnancy help center, or what's often called a crisis pregnancy center, these places where women can get ultrasounds and diapers and moral support. The pro-life world has had these for decades, in part to try and convince women not to have abortions.

These are places where Jesus looms large. It's not like they're government agencies. But lately, state legislatures like the one in Mississippi are doling out millions of dollars to these centers. This is the safety net they're imagining for women who are pregnant.

Emma Green

A bubbly white woman named Sara shows us closets full of baby gear and flyers for women interested in getting their GED, and she takes us down the hall to a room with a blue sofa where women can come and talk about what they're dealing with.

Emma Green

Visiting all of these places, it struck me how big this task will be, how big the need is. The women giving birth in Mississippi tend to be poor. The state is the worst in the country when it comes to infant mortality and child poverty. Anja is not daunted by this. We talked about it in the car.

Emma Green

When Anja imagines this new world, the world after Roe, it seems so clear to her. The need will be met. People will rise to the occasion. With enough phone calls and texts and emails and volunteer hours, she can fix anything. The babies are coming, and they'll be ready.

Ira Glass

Act 7, Back to Jackson. So we end our show today by returning to the clinic that was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe versus Wade, the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Mississippi. If you remember from the beginning of our show, the day of the Supreme Court decision, they were overwhelmed with phone calls, people hearing the news and wanting to schedule abortions.

And at first, they were turning people away. But the way Mississippi law works, the ban on abortion in the state wouldn't begin for at least another 10 days, which meant they had at least 10 days when they'd still be open and could perform abortions. Maisie Crow picks up the story from there.

Maisie Crow

The day Roe was overturned, remember, Shannon, the director, was in New Mexico trying to open the new clinic, Pink House West, and her sister Nita was running things in Mississippi. Around 10:00 in the morning, they get on the phone with Shannon.

Maisie Crow

Shannon tells them, we have a month of appointments booked right now. I want you to call every one of those patients who are scheduled and get them all to come in during the next 10 days.

Maisie Crow

Maybe they couldn't make any new appointments, but they could honor the ones they had.

Maisie Crow

They decide they'll stay open for extra hours, and they'll come in on days they're usually closed.

Maisie Crow

And then, everyone gets back on the phones, calls everyone with appointments on the books and asks, can you come in sooner? How about tomorrow? How about Sunday?

Maisie Crow

By the end of the day, they'd rearranged more things, called in other doctors, and even found a way to start booking new patients again too.

Maisie Crow

For the Pink House, which had for so long been uncloseable, this is what closing looks like, a fight.

Maisie Crow

For the rest of the day, patients are shown into treatment rooms as usual. A doctor does the counseling session the state mandates with patients who come in for an abortion.

Ira Glass

Nikki Lane singing a cover of "When My Morning Comes Around," which she recorded for us. Our program was produced today by Zoe Chace and Alix Spiegel and edited by Laura Starecheski.

The people who put together today's show include Jane Ackerman, Elna Baker, Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Andrea López-Cruzado, Aviva DeKornfeld, Chana Joffe-Walt, Kyla Jones, Seth Lind, Tobin Low, Miki Meek, Michelle Navarro, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Ryan Rumery, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Jessica Suriano, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu.

Our managing editor is Sara Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry. Movie legend Carol Kane agreed to be the voice of our pill smuggler in Act 5 today. Maisie Crow's movie about abortion in Mississippi, which follows the Pink House and Shannon Brewer, is called Jackson. You can find it on HBO Max.

Special thanks today to Mary Ziegler, Rebecca Curry, Andy Gipson, Clarke Forsythe, Elizabeth Nash, Diane Derzis, Javonne Brewer, Anna Wolfe, Larrison Campbell, Julie Lynn, Colleen McNichols, LaQuetta Cooper, Kawanna Shanon, Kelefa Sanneh, Jason Rosenbaum, Priska Neely, Mallory Carroll, Elisa Wells, Jill E. Adams, Pam Whitehead, Chloee Weiner, the National Abortion Federation Hotline, and Will Davis.

Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org where you can find a link to the full Nikki Lane song you're hearing right now. Also, you can stream our archive. We have over 750 episodes for absolutely free.

There's videos, lists of favorite shows, tons of other stuff there too. Again, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia.

You know, he has squirrels at his house, in his garden, front yard, doesn't like them. Gets kind of intense about it.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

[MUSIC - NIKKI LANE, "WHEN MY MORNING COMES AROUND"]