'Clinic' looks at abortion battle from both sides

November 08, 2005|Globe Staff

Most Americans assume that a woman's right to get an abortion in this country has remained undiminished since the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling established that constitutional protection. Wrong.

A lot has been going on in the abortion wars under the radar. From Mississippi to New Hampshire, ''Front-line" brings us up to speed tonight with its compelling look at the situation in ''The Last Abortion Clinic."

Anti-abortion rights forces, particularly in the South, have spearheaded the passage of more than 200 state regulations in the last 13 years limiting unrestricted abortions through devices like parental consent for a minor. (This is something plenty of pro-abortion rights parents with teenage daughters embrace, too.) In Mississippi, where some of the most aggressive antiabortion statutes have been enacted, there exists but one abortion clinic today, and its future is shaky.

In another arena, the newly constituted Supreme Court under neophyte Chief Justice John Roberts will hear a case from New Hampshire later this month, its first major abortion case in five years. Both sides agree the result could reshape the legal landscape on the issue.

''The Last Abortion Clinic" is written, directed, and produced by Raney Aronson, who gave us the excellent ''The Jesus Factor" last year, about the politics of religion for George Bush. There's no fat in this show. It's well-reported and, rare for '' Frontline," tightly pegged.

Aronson wisely focuses on lawyers from both sides who chart legal strategy in lieu of the tiresome extremists who compete for decibel dominance. Balance is always elusive, but the program is fair. It reminds us that such work would appear nowhere else on the small screen but public television.

The anti-abortion rights movement, it turns out, has been running a smart strategic campaign at the state level. The motto of Americans United for Life, the oldest national antiabortion organization, is ''Changing Law to Protect Human Life, State by State."

''The assault on abortion rights is very clever," says the owner of an unnamed abortion clinic in a neighboring state of Mississippi. (Names and location are omitted for security reasons.) ''And we are losing."

Nowhere is this clearer than in Mississippi. ''It's like even before Roe v. Wade for these poor women," says Pat White, an OB-GYN nurse who has worked for 30 years at public health clinics in the Mississippi Delta.

We follow the travails of the last Mississippi clinic, located in Jackson, and are brought inside the unnamed facility that performs abortions for many Mississippi women with nowhere else to go. There is grit and immediacy to all of this.