Abortion Clinic Fights To Stay Open

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Attorneys for Mississippi’s only abortion clinic are asking the U.S. Supreme Court not to review a lower court’s ruling that is keeping the clinic open.

In papers filed Thursday with the Supreme Court, clinic attorneys say the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was correct to block a 2012 Mississippi law. That law says every physician working at the abortion clinic must obtain privileges to admit patients to a local hospital. No hospital would grant the privileges to the out-of-state doctors at Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The appeals court last year ruled that the law could block access in Mississippi to a constitutionally protected medical procedure by closing the state’s only abortion clinic.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood filed papers in February asking the Supreme Court to overturn that ruling.