Diane Derzis is no stranger to fringe anti-abortion activists attacking her work. But even by her standards, it’s been a hell of a year.
As the owner of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the clinic at the center of the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade last month, Derzis had a front-row seat to the dismantling of the constitutional protection for the right to abortion.
With her Mississippi clinic forced to close in a state where abortion is now effectively impossible to access, like many providers, Derzis pivoted to a new project: providing safe abortions elsewhere. Early on, at least, laying the groundwork for her next facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico—a town bordering several anti-abortion states—was a dream, with the “welcoming” community bringing “tears to [her] eyes.”
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Then she found out about her new neighbors: anti-abortion activists determined to operate what critics describe as a “crisis pregnancy center,” part of a long tradition of pointing women toward everything except a terminated pregnancy.
“These people intend to follow us to the ends of the Earth,” Derzis told The Daily Beast on Friday, adding, “They are trolls.”
While an anti-abortion facility opening its doors near an abortion provider is straight out of the so-called pro-life playbook, Derzis’ experience is fresh evidence that anti-choice activists are just getting started.
After all, in New Mexico, the right to abortion is secure after lawmakers last year repealed a dormant 1969 law that would have outlawed the procedure.
But on Tuesday, just days before Derzis said she was set to begin taking patients at her new clinic, the Southwest Coalition for Life announced it was working to open what amounts to a crisis pregnancy center in Las Cruces. During a rally protesting the opening of the Las Cruces Women's Health Organization, Southwest Coalition for Life CEO Mark Cavaliere expressed his fear about the city turning into an abortion destination—and the need to “stand up” to providers.
“This has become the epicenter of post-Roe America,” Cavaliere added. “People are going to feel like they have no option except to alter, suppress, and destroy a normal, healthy function of their natural body.”
To do so, Cavaliere announced that a branch of the Guiding Star Project clinic will open up right next to Derzis.
Leah Jacobson, the CEO of the Guiding Star Project, told The Daily Beast on Friday that her organization has “actually never opened a location next to an abortion clinic before” and said the decision to do so was “a unique, first-time experience for us.” After “a bit of persuasion,” Jacobson said, she agreed to open a Guiding Star center in Las Cruces to provide an “alternative view of health care” for women in the area.
Cavaliere said Tuesday that the clinic would, as crisis pregnancy centers do, dangle multiple services—just not abortions for women who need them. According to Las Cruces Sun News, he also said some employees would likely be posted outside the Guiding Star clinic to offer “support and information” to would-be patients at Derzis’ clinic.
In a press release announcing the protest, Southwest Coalition for Life made its intentions clear, expressing hope that it would “directly impact” the new abortion provider’s “business potential.”
In an interview, Carly Thomsen, an assistant professor of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Middlebury College, explained that facilities like these are part of a “well-funded, well-coordinated industry that is central to the anti-abortion movement.”
“They have been using this geographic manipulation for a long time,” she told The Daily Beast.
Thomsen explained that anti-abortion centers setting up near abortion facilities is “a way of confusing people who are trying to get an abortion.” Once inside the center, she said, pregnant people are often given false information about reproductive services.
“These centers don’t provide much, except for shame and deception and false medical information,” she added.
Jacobson pushed back on the “crisis pregnancy center” moniker Friday, insisting that she has “very little interest in promoting a pregnancy center movement.”
“It’s been a term that is sometimes fairly used in places that set themselves up to be something they are not,” she said, rejecting that label for her project.
Addressing Derzis’ “troll” characterization, Jacobson said that Guiding Star was focused on “women’s health care surrounding fertility, childbirth, and breastfeeding outcomes.”
Innocuous though those goals may sound, Guiding Star Project’s website is rife with extremist talking points.
The group is openly opposed to abortion and contraception, claiming both “interrupt natural, healthy biological processes” for women. Southwest Coalition for Life has a similar stance, noting on their website that their mission is to see “God end abortion.” (Southwest Coalition for Life did not respond to a request for comment.)
Since the repeal of Roe, the number of crisis pregnancy centers has ballooned in abortion-protected states as anti-abortion activists try to stop residents from crossing state lines to seek reproductive services. According to the Crisis Pregnancy Center map, there are 24 crisis pregnancy centers in New Mexico. Once Las Cruces Women’s Health Organization begins seeing patients next week, the state will have seven bona fide abortion providers.
Thomsen noted that since New Mexico was already seeing a surge in crisis pregnancy centers, pregnant people in abortion-banned states like Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma seeking refuge may fall victim to anti-abortion tactics.
Local officials were already sounding the alarm.
Three Las Cruces City Councilors told The Daily Beast on Friday that they were concerned about the chilling effect of having an anti-abortion clinic open up next door to Derzis’ facility.
“Las Cruces is going to be a battleground for reproductive rights,” City Councilor Kasandra Gandara said.
Acknowledging that New Mexico’s legal stance on abortion would ensure that both providers and crisis pregnancy centers “will be seeking a new home here,” City Councilor Johana Bencomo was pulling for something other than total chaos.
“My hope is that the Southwest Coalition of Life is not bringing outside agitators that will make people seeking health care feel unsafe,” Bencomo told The Daily Beast.
Derzis on Friday emphasized her own desire to live harmoniously with the new shop next door—if that is possible.
Noting that the welcoming vibe from the general public in New Mexico was “so totally the opposite of everything we have ever known in Mississippi,” she told The Daily Beast she suspected residents were “angry” about the idea of anti-abortion activists bothering patients.
“Listen, if we have a woman that comes in and describes she wants to continue her pregnancy, we will refer her to that other clinic,” Derzis said. “But let us be honest about what each of us is. Don’t lie to people or harass them because you might have different views.”
