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JACKSON, Miss. -- This is the deadline for that clinic to comply with a law that would require anyone performing abortions there to be an OB GYN with admitting privileges at a local hospital. Governor Phil Bryant signed that bill into law last year. “My goal of course is to shut it down. But now, we will follow the laws. The bill is in the courts now relating to the physicians and their association with the hospitals; but if I had the ability to do so, I would do so tomorrow,” Bryant said Thursday.
Dian Derzis owns the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. We could not reach her today. But in an early interview she told News Mississippi that
their doctors are OB-GYNs. However, they were having problems getting admitting privileges. “It’s a lengthy process,” she said. And one, she does not feel the clinic should not have to go through. “What people don’t understand is that that’s a financial relationship between the physician and the hospital whereby the physician has a place to send his patients and the hospital has the ability to see those patients and stay in business.”
But Derzis told us they are not operating a practice. “We don’t need to send ten patients a month to the hospital. That’s why (the law) should not apply to us. It has nothing to do with women’s safety.”
That clinic went to federal court and got a temporary restraining order blocking any penalties under the law while they try to get admitting privileges.
It’s not clear if they are, or will be in compliance by the end of the day when that order expires. But attorneys for Derzis say even if the clinic is not in compliance today, there are other appeals allowed under state Health Department rules that could buy them more time.
