In one of the worst visual metaphors I’ve ever seen, Mississippi’s one embattled abortion clinic—called the Pink House for its bubblegum stucco walls—has now been painted white and is set to re-open as a luxury consignment store selling high-end home goods and furniture.
Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi, was the state’s only abortion clinic since 2004 and was relentlessly targeted by lawmakers and protestors. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last spring, the justices were hearing a case about a 2018 Mississippi law in which the Pink House was the plaintiff challenging the law. The clinic served its last patients on July 6 before the state’s trigger ban took effect.
Gulf States Newsroom reporter Shalina Chatlani shared a photo of the former clinic’s new exterior on Tuesday, calling it “surreal” and adding that the building is in a “highly gentrified neighborhood” known as Fondren.
The news of the store taking over was first reported in January, but renovations on the 3,000 square foot building had just begun. Hunt The Shop is relocating from a smaller store less than a half-mile away and was originally set to open March 1, but Hunt said on its Instagram that it plans to open at 2903 North State Street—the former clinic site—on March 22.
Hunt owner David Carpenter told NBC News that he wasn’t interested in discussing the past of the building that he bought in July from a developer.
“I really don’t want to get into the political side of it,” Carpenter said in January. “That was then. This is now. I want to do something that the community will embrace. I want it to be a positive thing.”
That’s nice for him, I guess, but it does seem like it’s way too easy for a white male business owner to brush aside the history of a building that fought and lost against a decades-long conservative effort to erase a fundamental right. A building that predominantly served Black patients, as it was located in a majority-Black city in the U.S. state with the highest proportion of Black residents. A city that, to this day, can’t get state and federal leaders to solve the water crisis caused by decades of systemic racism.
And Carpenter only owns the building because JWHO owner Diane Derzis, who is also white, chose to sell it and open a clinic in New Mexico, rather than stay in the community and offer birth control and prenatal care, as other former abortion clinics have done.
Best of luck re-selling rich people’s armchairs, David.