Mississippi
One year post-Roe, crisis pregnancy centers expand footprint in Mississippi
![One year post-Roe, crisis pregnancy centers expand footprint in Mississippi One year post-Roe, crisis pregnancy centers expand footprint in Mississippi](https://s.abcnews.com/images/GMA/pregnancy-choices-meridian-1-ht-thg-230622_1687442685559_hpMain_16x9_608.jpg)
For the past year, Michelle Colon, a reproductive health advocate in Jackson, Mississippi, has not been able to bring herself to drive past the
Pink House.
Now, the building is painted white, the site of an upscale consignment shop – as much a symbol of victory for anti-abortion groups as the Pink House was once a symbol of defiance.
“I still can’t bring myself to go down that street,” Colon, cofounder and executive director of SHERo Mississippi, a Black women’s reproductive justice organization, told ABC News. “It was such a beautiful building .. and was the heart of that neighborhood.”
A year after the
Supreme Court’s landmark case overturning a half century of abortion rights under Roe vs. Wade, abortion is banned entirely with exceptions for rape reported to law enforcement and to protect the life of the mother. There is no exception for incest.
Performing an abortion is a felony punishable by up to 10 years.
Researchers estimate there are
roughly 3,150 fewer legal abortions in the state as a result, although it’s not entirely clear if those patients are opting to give birth or traveling out of state for abortions – a trip that could take a full day’s worth of driving to Illinois or Florida.
While the Pink House is no longer, within miles of its old location are nearly half-a-dozen crisis pregnancy centers, or pregnancy resource centers, non-medical facilities that offer free ultrasounds and pregnancy tests as well as support ranging from free diapers to clothing and parenting classes to women who choose to continue on with their pregnancy.
Shelby Wilcher, press secretary for Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, said the centers are critical to the state helping women and families.
“While Mississippi is proud to have led the nation in overturning Roe v. Wade, winning a court case was never our true objective. It was building a culture of life throughout our state and country,” she said in a statement.
For abortion rights advocates like Colon, the centers stand as a symbol of what’s gone wrong in the state post-Roe.
“You can give somebody today a little gift bag with, you know, one pack of Pampers and a pack of baby wipes … that’s enough to get you through, what, a couple of days,” Colon said. “But we’re talking about long-term assistance, that long-term help they claim that they do and that’s just not true.”
Boon in tax credits for Mississippi CPCs
Crisis pregnancy centers have existed in cities and towns across the country for decades but have grown in number in recent years. As of 2021, there were around 3,000 CPCs in the U.S.,
according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an anti-abortion research and policy organization.
The centers are typically faith-based nonprofit organizations that rely mostly on private donations from churches, businesses and individuals.
In at least one dozen states, CPCs also receive state funding.
When abortion was banned in Mississippi last year, Reeves pledged to support women staying pregnant and having babies.
He’s since extended postpartum Medicaid coverage from two months to one year and is setting up a task force to improve the state’s foster care and adoption system.
But the most immediate impact has been the millions of dollars in tax credits funneled to crisis pregnancy centers in the state.
Last year, Reeves signed a law authorizing a $3.5 million tax credit for businesses and individuals that donate to crisis pregnancy centers in Mississippi, becoming one of the first states to do so. This April, Reeve expanded that tax credit to $10 million.
To qualify for the donations, the centers must meet specific requirements, including not spending more than 20% of the money on administration costs and not paying for providing abortions or financially supporting another organization that does.
Sara Smith, executive director of the Center for Pregnancy Choices in Meridian, said she envisions the center being able to greatly expand its services with money it receives from the tax credit.
“In a perfect world, we’d be able to buy a building and not have a mortgage,” Smith told ABC News. “And be able to have a bigger spot for the medical services and then a bigger donation room and have a bigger diaper bank because we know that diapers are one of the most needed supplies for babies.”
What is the money doing for women?
Supporters of crisis pregnancy centers say the additional funding from the tax credit is needed to support families and offset the impact of Mississippi’s abortion ban.
But it’s not entirely clear what’s happening to those patients who would have sought an abortion previously and whether they are opting to travel out of state, ordering abortion medication online or opting to continue the pregnancy.
State data on births is out of date and Smith and other CPC leaders say they haven’t seen a dramatic increase in clients because of the ban.
Smith said the center has seen a slight increase in clients over the past year but attributed the rise to the center’s increased marketing and community outreach efforts. She said women are still coming to the center unsure of whether they want to continue with their pregnancy.
“If they say, ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ we ask them if they have the time and if they’re willing to discuss what they mean by that and we listen and observe what they’re saying and where they’re coming from,” Smith said. “Then we take a holistic approach and we say, ‘Who’s in your corner with you? Where do your supports come from? Where do you think you need more support?’ And we start thinking in our mind … what can we do to fill these needs, to meet these needs?”
Terri Herring, president of Choose Life Mississippi, a nonprofit organization that provides grant money to CPCs through the sale of Choose Life specialty license plates, told ABC News the increase in women at CPCs over the past year has “not been overwhelming by any sense.” She said what she has noticed is increased support for CPCs since the overturning of Roe.
“I think getting abortion outside the courts has provided an incentive for people to do more,” Herring said, adding, “We can now look at this and say, we have achieved our goal, which was the overturn of Roe v Wade, and basically closing the last abortion clinic in Mississippi and ending abortion as we know it in Mississippi. So now that we have achieved that goal, how can we move forward in helping these women now that they choose life, or help them choose life, help them through their pregnancy?”
Shannon Bagley, executive director of the Center for Pregnancy Choices in Vicksburg, said the center has also not seen a dramatic increase in women seeking help with their pregnancies over the past year.
She said there has been an increase in demand for parenting classes, which the center began to offer online during the coronavirus pandemic. As is the case at most CPCs, when a person completes a class through the Center for Pregnancy Choices in Vicksburg, they earn so-called “baby bucks” which they can then redeem for diapers and donated supplies like clothes, breast pumps, cribs and mattresses.
Bagley acknowledged that most of the support the center offers goes up until a child is age 4. Beyond that, she said she focuses on building community support for families and their kids, an effort she said she’s even more focused on post-Roe.
She and other CPC leaders ABC News spoke with describe the centers as a “hub of knowledge” where people can be connected to the support they need.
“We have found that even at the four-year mark, I can now send her over to another facility that does similar things that we do but they do [ages] 4 and up,” Bagley said. “So it’s saying, “OK, we’ve got what you need, but also have somebody else that can help you too,’ or, ‘Oh look, I’ve got all these resources, how can we come together as a community to support you as a family?’”
Carra Powell, a volunteer at The Care Center, in Southaven, Mississippi, said her center has also seen an increase in demand over the past year for the free parenting and childbirth classes it offers.
“I think a lot of people think a pregnancy resource center is strictly just serving women that are expecting, but there are many different families and women in different stages of parenting that are using the center,” she said, describing the center as a “no-judgement zone.” “We also provide aftercare for women, so clothing, cribs, continuing education classes, food services.”
‘Some of these women are delivering on the side of the road’
Colon and other reproductive health care advocates say the money from the $10 million tax credit signed into law by Reeves would go farther if it helped families care for their children, create jobs, provide long-term health care and afford housing instead.
“It’s a tragedy that there’s funding that has been created and it’s funneling to these entities when that money could be situated to help the real and existing families of Mississippi,” Colon told ABC News.
Reproductive health care advocates point in particular to data showing Mississippi remains in one of the worse situations in the country when it comes to maternal and infant care.
Dr. Elizabeth Cherot, senior vice president and chief medical and health officer at the March of Dimes, told ABC News that Reeves’ extension of Medicaid for postpartum women to one year is a potential “game changer.” Still, she said, there remains serious gaps in care for women.
It’s estimated that more than half of counties in Mississippi didn’t have a single birthing center, hospital or obstetrics provider when the abortion ban took effect, according to March of Dimes’ data. Many hospitals in the state are shutting down due to financial reasons and a lack of staff and some doctors have expressed concerns about legal liability.
The lack of access to obstetrics care means pregnant women will travel on average of nearly 16 miles to see a doctor, according to Cherot. In particularly rural counties in Mississippi, it’s not uncommon for women to travel an hour each way.
“Some of these women are delivering on the side of the road, putting their baby on their lap and driving if they don’t have somebody to help them, or they’re bringing the rest of their children in the car,” Cherot said. “So this is a real problem that women are facing that gives me chills to think about this is what’s happening in the United States.”
According to the state’s own maternal mortality report
released in January, the pregnancy related mortality ratio has increased to 36.0 deaths per 100,000 live births. Nearly 88% of pregnancy related deaths were deemed preventable and the maternal mortality rate for Black, non-Hispanic women is four times higher than for white women.
Wilcher, with Gov. Reeves, told ABC News it will take time to see results.
“The governor’s office will continue to do everything in its power to deliver the support moms and babies deserve,” Wilcher said in a statement.
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
Mississippi
As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News
![As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News](https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/PRODUCE015-1024x683.jpg)
This story was originally published by The Tennessee Lookout.
A smorgasbord of bright red tomatoes and vibrant vegetables line the walls of Michael Katrutsa’s produce shop in rural Camden, Tennessee. What began a decade ago as a roadside farm stand is now an air-conditioned outbuilding packed with crates of watermelon, cantaloupe and his locally renowned sweet corn — all picked fresh by a handful of local employees each morning.
The roughly 20-acre farm west of the Tennessee River sells about half of its produce through his shop, with the rest going to the wholesale market.
Farms like Katrutsa’s make up just a sliver of roughly 10.7 million acres of Tennessee farmland largely dominated by hay, soybeans, corn and cotton. Specialized machines help farmers harvest vast quantities of these commodity “row crops,” but Katrutsa said the startup cost was too steep for him. While specialty crops like produce are more labor-intensive, requiring near-constant attention from early July up until the first frost in October, Katrutsa said he takes pride in feeding his neighbors.
The World Wildlife Fund sees farms in the mid-Mississippi delta as ripe with opportunity to become a new mecca for commercial-scale American produce. California currently grows nearly three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts and more than a third of its vegetables.
Explore the latest news about what’s at stake for the climate during this election season.
But as climate change compounds the threats of water scarcity, extreme weather and wildfires on California’s resources, WWF’s Markets Institute is exploring what it would take for farmers in West Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas to embrace — and equitably profit from — specialty crop production like strawberries, lettuce or walnuts.
Specialty crops make up only 0.19% of the region’s farm acreage, but their higher sale value allows them to generate 1.08% of the region’s agriculture revenue, according to WWF’s May report, called The Next California, spearheaded by Markets Institute Senior Director Julia Kurnik. She argues that there’s an opportunity to proactively create more inclusive, higher-yield business models on existing farms, preventing natural ecosystems from being unnecessarily transformed into farmland.
But shifting produce growth to the Mid-Delta comes with hurdles: it requires buyers willing to try new markets, understanding of new crops’ diseases and needs, specialized equipment like cold storage and lots of expensive hands-on labor.
“It is not as simple as a farmer simply putting new crops in the ground,” Kurnik said.
Early Adopters Put Idea to the Test
Sixth-generation Arkansas farmer Hallie Shoffner is putting WWF’s models to the test through a nonprofit called the Delta Harvest Food Hub. The hub works with Black and women farmers to pilot the scalability of growing specialty crops in the Delta region, starting with specialty rice.
Shoffner grows basmati, jasmine, sushi rice, sake rice seeds and more on her 2,000-acre, century-old farm located in an unincorporated town outside Newport, Arkansas. She’s skeptical about a full switch to produce, but sees specialty rice products as “low-hanging fruit” easily adopted in the mid-Delta, where commodity rice is already widely grown.
The United States is the fifth-largest rice exporter in the world, and Arkansas is the country’s top producer, with other Mississippi River valley states not far behind. But the majority of specialty rice is grown in California or imported from East Asian countries.
“We are forward-thinking farmers who want to change, who want to do something different,” Shoffner said. “We want to make more money, because we know we cannot make as much money as small farms in the current agricultural economy.”
The commodity farming that dominates Delta agriculture makes the economic success of farmers largely dependent on the market prices of rice, corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops, Shoffner said. This incentivizes farms to grow larger to ensure they turn a profit even when prices are low, like they are now. But smaller farms struggle to stay afloat.
Shoffner said her vision for developing specialty crop markets in Arkansas will be through more collaboration between many smaller farms to diversify crop production and produce for large contracts together. She’s also exploring possibilities for expanding chickpea, sunflower, sesame and pea production in Arkansas.
And while she’s at it, Shoffner is working to make agriculture more equitable.
“As a white farmer who is a sixth generation farmer, I realize that I have inherited a large amount of land that systematically disenfranchised Black farmers,” Shoffner said. “And it is my responsibility to acknowledge that, and leverage what I’ve been given to help others.”
Her project, Delta Harvest, has a contract to grow specialty rice with a large company and she’s working with several Black farmers. She was too small to do it by herself, so they are doing it cooperatively.
Finding the Right Markets
In Mississippi, efforts to shift some of California’s sprawling specialty crop industry to the Mid-Delta drew skepticism from some farmers—even those with established specialty crop operations.
For the past 20 years, Don van de Werken has co-owned a 120-acre blueberry and tea farm in Poplarville, Mississippi, distributing much of its crops to buyers in his county and nearby cities.
Van de Werken questioned whether there would be enough regional demand to sustain a scaled-up specialty crop industry in Mississippi, noting that the success of his own enterprise hinges on targeting hyper-local markets like New Orleans. Shipping vegetables, fruits and other produce to buyers outside the Delta region would quickly become cost prohibitive for local farmers, van de Werken said.
“The problem we have, not just in Mississippi but the mid South in general, is we just don’t have the population base,” said van de Werken, who is also president of the Gulf South Blueberry Growers Association. “We don’t want our blueberries to go to Maine or Seattle. We want to focus our produce in a regional market.”
To make growing specialty crops worthwhile, Mississippi farmers would need to identify nearby buyers willing to purchase the new products on a consistent basis, van de Werken said. While selling goods directly to retail grocery chains like Kroger is often difficult, farmers could reduce financial risks by signing purchasing agreements with regional brokers like Louisiana-based Capitol City Produce.
“Anybody that puts anything in the ground is already taking a risk, but you want to minimize that risk,” he explained. “If you can prove to the brokers and the buyers that they can make money doing this, then the farming will come.”
The WWF report investigates ways to distribute risk across the supply chain to make selling to new markets easier on farmers, and works to connect buyers with Mid-Delta farmers.
AgLaunch, a Memphis-based nonprofit that guides farmers in innovation, estimates that adding specialty crops to the Mid-Delta region could spur $4.6 billion in added revenue and 33,000 jobs. But while commodity crop prices are readily available on the Chicago Board of Trade, the specialty crop market is generally not so transparent. Large, vertically integrated companies usually dictate contract terms, AgLaunch President and farmer Pete Nelson said.
AgLaunch helps build “smart contracts” that allow multiple farmers to produce on a contract, helping them secure higher quantity deals with proper compensation as a collective.
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Purdue College of Agriculture professor Fred Whitford said the idea of farming cooperatives that help smaller farmers carve out space in a large-quantity market is more than 100 years old. Whitford compared commodity producers to retail giants like Walmart, which make money by selling in bulk. Small producers are more like Ace Hardware, he said.
“Maybe the smaller folks have an ability to make more off their land by going to a specialty crop,” he said.
New Challenges Need New Solutions
Farmers who embrace specialty crops will face hurdles before they make it to the market.
Growing produce can be more profitable but “easier said than done,” Whitford said. “It’s nice on paper … but boy, in reality, you’re going to have to keep an eye on this crop, whatever you’re growing, because one slip up … then you have lost a lot of money.”
In Tennessee, Katrutsa grew strawberries in addition to his other crops for 10 years, but last April, a hail storm pulverized his entire field, leaving him with nothing. He’s not growing strawberries this year, and he might not plant them again — he’s not sure if he can find enough labor to make it work.
He grows many types of produce so if one fails, it’s less catastrophic. He sources seedlings from a neighboring state (it’s cheaper than growing from seed) and plants five times each season to maximize yield.
He works with a consultant to help identify diseases and how to treat them. Tomatoes are the most challenging, Katrutsa said. Some of his tomato plants withered this year due to bacterial wilt that flourishes in wet soil and high temperatures and has few effective chemical remedies.
Carolyn Preble helps out farmer Michael Katrutsa at the farm shop, which stocks the more than 20 acres of produce Katrutsa grows in rural Camden, Tennessee. Credit: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout
Chemical treatments pose other challenges. In Shaw, Mississippi, Michael Muzzi relies on a range of herbicides to grow soybeans and other feed grains on his 2,000-acre farm. Once sprayed, herbicides like Liberty and Dicamba remain in the ground and can drift in the air, which is hazardous to specialty crops, like tomatoes, that aren’t resistant.
“You’re not going to be able to spray [those herbicides] on specialty crops,” Muzzi said. “You’d have to have something that’s chemically tolerant.”
Growing fruits and vegetables on a farm with previous heavy herbicide use would require insulating those crops from chemical runoff — a feat that could only be reliably achieved by leaving whole acres of land unused for years, he said.
AgLaunch is exploring innovative ways to address these problems. For some farmers, this means helping make their existing row crops more efficient using farmer-incubated technology, adding local value by growing specialty crops or taking on processing, Nelson said.
Then there’s disruption with higher risk: farmers can partner with agriculture automation technology startups, allowing them to field test their products and collect data in exchange for farmer equity in the startup companies. If the startup succeeds, the farmer shares in the benefits.
“It’s not as simple as, ‘Hey, we should grow tomatoes,’” Nelson said. “It’s how you think about the whole value chain and make sure the farmer is protected. Make sure it’s not an opportunity just to grow a crop, but it’s an opportunity to own part of the processing or to build new products.”
Kurnik said WWF isn’t trying to recruit farmers to start growing specialty crops – they just want Mid-Delta farmers to have the information they need to make informed decisions. In terms of acreage, row crops “dwarf” specialty crops in the United States. A small percentage shift would mean a significant change in the level of specialty crops in the Delta.
“We don’t need everyone to want to jump on board tomorrow,” she said. “They would flood the market if they did.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. Disclosure: The Next California report was also funded by Walton.
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Mississippi
Mississippi man dies of an apparent overdose in MDOC custody in Rankin County
![Mississippi man dies of an apparent overdose in MDOC custody in Rankin County Mississippi man dies of an apparent overdose in MDOC custody in Rankin County](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/62f03215fa8f49a1bd8baf9d444d47064169505c/c=0-21-533-322/local/-/media/2015/08/01/JacksonMS/JacksonMS/635740391618225482-jail-bars-prison-bars-.jpg?auto=webp&format=pjpg&width=1200)
A 41-year-old man incarcerated at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County died Thursday of an apparent overdose.
Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain confirmed the death in a news release.
The man was identified as Juan Gonzalez. According to prison records, he was serving a four-year sentence on multiple convictions in Hinds County and was tentatively scheduled for release in May 2025.
“Because of the unknown nature of the substance, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Department of Health were notified,” MDOC reported.
The investigation into Gonzalez’s death remains ongoing.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
Mississippi
Mississippi high school football scores for 2024 MHSAA Week 2
![Mississippi high school football scores for 2024 MHSAA Week 2 Mississippi high school football scores for 2024 MHSAA Week 2](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2024/08/31/PJAM/75024172007-tcl-clinton-vs-warren-central-21.jpg?auto=webp&crop=2099,1181,x0,y0&format=pjpg&width=1200)
Watch as Clinton begins season with 26-20 win over Warren Central in Vicksburg
Watch highlights from Clinton’s 26-20 win over Warren Central in the Arrows season opener Friday night.
Here is our Mississippi high school football scoreboard, including the second week of the season for MHSAA programs.
THURSDAY
Heidelberg 14, Quitman 8
Independence 20, Byhalia 6
Myrtle 47, Potts Camp 18
North Pontotoc 41, Water Valley 19
Okolona 40, Calhoun City 0
Provine 16, Lanier 6
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