Then 24, she wanted an abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court had
legalized abortion nationwide months earlier with its landmark Roe
v. Wade ruling recognizing a woman's constitutional right to
terminate a pregnancy. But abortions were not legally available at
the time in Mississippi, where she lived in the small town of Port
Gibson.
Phillips, a Black woman enmeshed in the civil rights movement, could
feel her dream of becoming a lawyer slipping away.
"It was devastating. I was desperate," Phillips said, sitting on the
patio of her cozy one-story house in Oxford, a college town about
160 miles (260 km) north of Jackson, Mississippi's capital.
At the time of the Roe ruling, 46 of the 50 U.S. states had some
sort of criminal prohibitions on abortion. Access often was limited
to wealthy and well-connected women, who tended to be white.
With a feminist group's help, Phillips located a doctor in New York
willing to provide an abortion. New York before Roe was the only
state that let out-of-state women obtain abortions. She flew there
for the procedure.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Nov/23/images/ads/current/farmers_bank_sda_FHI_2021.png)
Now 72, Phillips does not regret her abortion. She went on to attend
Northwestern law school in Chicago and realize her goal of becoming
a civil rights lawyer, with a long career. Years later, she had a
son when she felt the time was right.
"I was determined to decide for myself what I wanted to do with my
life and my body," Phillips said.
U.S. abortion rights are under attack unlike any time since the Roe
ruling, with Republican-backed restrictions being passed in numerous
states. The Supreme Court on Dec. 1 is set to hear arguments in a
case in which Mississippi is seeking to revive its law, blocked by
lower courts, banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Mississippi has raised the stakes by explicitly asking the court,
which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Such a ruling could turn back the clock in Mississippi, which
currently has just one abortion clinic, and other states to the kind
of environment on abortion access that Phillips experienced nearly a
half century ago.
Large swathes of America could return to an era in which women who
want to end a pregnancy face the choice of undergoing a potentially
dangerous illegal abortion, traveling long distances to a state
where the procedure remains legal and available or buying abortion
pills online.
Mississippi's abortion law is not the only one being tested at the
Supreme Court. The justices on Nov. 1 heard arguments in challenges
to a Texas law banning abortion at about six weeks of pregnancy, but
have not yet ruled.
TRIGGER LAWS
Mississippi is one of a dozen states with so-called trigger laws
that would immediately ban abortion in all or most cases if Roe is
overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group
that supports abortion rights.
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![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Nov/23/images/ads/current/graue_preowned_112221.png) Many are in the South, so a
Mississippi woman would be unable to obtain an
abortion in neighboring Louisiana, Arkansas,
Tennessee or Alabama. The nearest states where
abortion would remain legal, at least in the
short term, would be Illinois and Florida.
The average distance a Mississippi woman would need to drive to
reach a clinic would increase from 78 miles to 380 miles (125 to 610
km) each way, according to Guttmacher.
While some abortion rights advocates fear a return to grisly illegal
back-alley abortions, there has been an important development since
the pre-Roe era: abortion pills. Mississippi is among 19 states
imposing restrictions on medication-induced abortions.
Mississippi officials are cagey on what a post-Roe world might look
like. Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who asked the court to
overturn Roe, declined an interview request, as did Republican
Governor Tate Reeves.
Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Andy Gipson,
who as a Republican state legislator helped shepherd the 2018
passage of the 15-week ban, called Roe v. Wade "antiquated, old law
based on antiquated and old science."
Gipson in an interview declined to answer questions about what
Mississippi - or the southeastern United States - would be like
without abortion rights, focusing on the specifics of the 15-week
ban.
"It's a false narrative to paint this as a picture of an outright
ban throughout the southeast," Gipson said, noting that the Supreme
Court does not have to formally overturn Roe to uphold Mississippi's
law.
In court papers, Fitch said scientific advances, including contested
claims that a fetus can detect pain early in a pregnancy, emphasize
how Roe and a subsequent 1992 decision that reaffirmed abortion
rights are "decades out of date."
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Nov/23/images/ads/current/brandt_sda_FFARM_2020.png)
Abortion rights advocates have said any ruling upholding
Mississippi's law would effectively gut Roe, giving states
unfettered power to limit or ban the procedure.
Phillips worries about a revival of dangerous, unregulated abortions
that imperil women's lives.
"I'm afraid that many more women and girls will be in back alleys,"
Phillips said. "I'm worried we are going to find them in country
roads, dead."
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott
Malone)
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