News

JACKSON, MS, November 25, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The owner of the last abortion facility in Mississippi has said she feels enabling abortions is a divine calling.

“I feel like God wants me to do this job,” Diane Derzis told the Associated Press.

Pointing to Rev. Flip Benham and other protesters from Operation Save America, she said, “If they think they’re going to make me feel badly about what I do…not gonna happen.”

Image

Derzis also expressed no remorse for the abortion she had at age 20, when her child was at 12 weeks development.

“I thank God every day I had that abortion,” she said. She said the abortionist was not pleasant toward her, but she “ had a safe abortion, and that’s what counts.”

Derzis' facilities have a history of unsafe abortions.

Paramedics transported two women on the same day through an alley at Derzis' New Women, All Women clinic in Birmingham last January because the facility was not accessible for emergency care workers. The ambulance had been turned away an hour earlier, then returned to the scene.

That triggered an investigation that resulted in the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) detailing enough violations to fill a 76-page report. ADPH said the facility allowed non-licensed and untrained employees to perform procedures that require a licensed nurse or doctor with little supervision, used outdated equipment, and failed to keep records properly.

The state of Alabama permanently enjoined Derzis from operating an abortion facility as a result. ADPH announced the closure last year, on Good Friday.

Critics say Derzis tried to skirt the law by having Kelley Rainwater, a close associate, apply for a license to reopen the facility. State health officials denied her application on February 8.

Image

Her out-of-state abortionist, Dr. Bruce Norman, then operated an abortion facility on the premises without a state license. Derzis, he said, was only his “landlord.” In August, an Alabama judge closed the facility down for good.

In Mississippi, Derzis is defying a state law that would close her Jackson Women’s Health Organization (JWHO).

Click “like” if you want to end abortion!

Lawmakers approved a bill last year that would require all abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, in the event of botched abortionists. A federal judge temporarily blocked the order, then ruled last July that it could go forward – but that Derzis “will not be subject to the risk of criminal or civil penalties at this time or in the future for operating without the relevant privileges.”

She has appealed to have the law overturned with help from the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights. Allowing such restrictions “effectively gives local hospitals veto power,” its lawyers said.

Derzis painted the abortion facility hot pink in an attempt to link her facility's fate to an alleged “war on women.”

She may have her work cut out for her. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that upheld a similar Texas law requiring admitting privileges.

Despite her checkered past, Derzis' refusal to go out of business has won her plaudits from the far-Left.

The Associated Press highlighted the praise of Sunsara Taylor of Stop Patriarchy, who visited the organization this month. Taylor saluted Derzis' “courage, the bravery, the self-sacrifice to keep women’s right to abortion available, especially in places where the whole state apparatus is so dead set against” abortion.

Taylor, as well as the other leaders and most protesters with Stop Patriarchy, are members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a cult-like group that believes the U.S. government must be overthrown by violent revolution and hailed the 1992 L.A. riots.

Stop Pariarchy's actions have been hailed by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and formally endorsed by Janeane Garofalo, playwright Eve Ensler, leaders of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and abortionists like Willie Parker, Diane Derzis, and Merle Hoffman.