{"id":1063334,"date":"2023-05-22T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inthesetimes.com\/article\/what-its-like-to-have-an-abortion-denied"},"modified":"2023-05-22T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T15:00:00","slug":"what-its-like-to-have-an-abortion-denied-by-dobbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/05\/22\/what-its-like-to-have-an-abortion-denied-by-dobbs\/","title":{"rendered":"What It's Like to Have an Abortion Denied by Dobbs"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t\t\t\t
Lationna Halbert doesn\u2019t like pickles. But one day, in July 2022, she was hit with an intense craving as she watched her boss eat one. The only other time she had craved pickles was four years prior, when she was pregnant with her son. When she indulged and ate one, she threw up. Lationna decided to take a pregnancy test just in case. <\/p>\n
It was positive. <\/p>\n
\u201cI cried, I cried, I cried,\u201d Lationna says. \u201cIt was a surprise. Lord, it was a surprise.\u201d She later figured out she was three months along. <\/p>\n
Lationna\u2019s face, framed by hair that hangs in long, soft curls, is round and pretty. Her cocoa skin glows and her large eyes, hidden behind thick glasses, are the same golden shade. She doesn\u2019t smile often, but when she does, it spreads across her whole face, revealing a tiny piercing above her front teeth. At 26, she already had a 4-year-old son, Royalty, tall and skinny with his mom\u2019s coloring and wide eyes. Lationna wanted to give Royalty a sibling someday, so he would be less lonely. But not like this. <\/p>\n
Before having another child, Lationna wanted to be married to her partner, Kendall; to have a steady job that paid well; to get a new car; to live in a house instead of an apartment; and for Royalty to be in a better school. <\/p>\n
Instead, Lationna worked as an IT clerk at a nearby elementary school, doing things like creating attendance reports and report cards. She liked the job well enough; her coworkers and the students made it worthwhile. But Lationna only earned $8.50 an hour. Her monthly check went immediately to covering rent\u2014$853 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in a complex of dozens of identical buildings in West Jackson, Miss.\u2014plus the internet bill. She lived with Kendall and the two shared expenses. Kendall earned $18 an hour as a welder and detailed cars on the side, but the two still struggled to put money away for savings or emergencies. They couldn\u2019t afford cable; after rent, Lationna barely had enough money to gas up her car. <\/p>\n
Lationna hoped to move as soon as they could afford it. The drive to the apartment winds along a road so full of deep, wide potholes that drivers have to swerve into the oncoming lane to spare their tires. Jackson\u2019s water treatment facility failed in August 2022, leaving the city without clean water for weeks. Problems bubbled up again late that December, all connected to Mississippi\u2019s decades-long underfunding of critical infrastructure in the majority Black city. <\/p>\n
Lationna dreamed of moving \u201csomewhere that\u2019s nice and quiet and peaceful.\u201d Her ultimate hope was to leave for Dallas, where she thought she could give Royalty better opportunities. But she would have been happy to move to Clinton, a town just five minutes down the road, made up of tidy subdivisions with squat houses that all have driveways and yards. A sign at the edge of town seemed addressed to her: \u201cYou belong here.\u201d <\/p>\n
But moving even five minutes away costs money they didn\u2019t have. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted everything to be better than what it is now,\u201d Lationna says. Kendall felt the same. \u201cWe were not ready to have a baby.\u201d <\/p>\n
Shortly after Lationna took the test, she tried to make an online appointment to get an abortion at Jackson Women\u2019s Health\u2014commonly known as the Pink House, nicknamed for its Pepto Bismol-colored outer walls. Since 2004, it was the only abortion clinic in Mississippi. She never heard back. <\/p>\n
Just a month prior, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade<\/em> with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization,<\/em> a case that originated in Lationna\u2019s home state when the Pink House sued Mississippi over its 15-week abortion ban. Mississippi\u2019s preexisting abortion ban trigger law went into effect automatically on July 7; the Pink House ceased operations the same day.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t