From Roe to Dobbs and beyond: The last clinic in Mississippi

By Devon Heinen, Alabama Reflector

Not a single employee of the New Woman All Women Clinic in Birmingham quit after it was bombed in 1998.

It would always be the abortion clinic that got bombed—the place where security guard and police officer Robert Sanderson died, and head nurse Emily Lyons was severely injured.

Those facts weren’t ever going to change.

But owner Diane Derzis kept the clinic functioning, and a new normal quickly developed, she said.

Photos were hung up inside the clinic that showed what it looked like following the attack. The images served as a reminder for everyone—patients and employees alike—of the lengths that someone in the anti-abortion community went to in order to try to stop women from having access to a safe abortion.

Still, the doors were open. Patients came in. Abortions were done. It would stay like this for years.

Then, in early 2012, the state of Alabama came for the clinic’s license.