Text by Abigail Abrams
Shannon Brewer’s eyes dart to a grid of grainy images on a wide, black screen above her desk at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization (JWHO). Live footage shows a large truck creeping into the clinic’s parking lot, its side emblazoned with a pair of blue, ghostly baby feet and the words Where are our children? Brewer doesn’t recognize the driver. Her spine stiffens.
As the director and de facto head of security at the last abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi, Brewer is not easily spooked. In her two decades there, she has seen bomb scares and stalking incidents, and protesters getting in fights with her staff. She keeps the number of an FBI contact amid a sea of sticky notes beside her desk. But this year, she says, everything feels more intense. More dangerous. More consequential.