Dr. Willie Parker is the last doctor in Mississippi willing to perform abortions. He is also a Christian.
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Dr. Parker grew up on food stamps in Alabama but eventually worked his way up to Harvard University, which led him into a career as a college professor and obstetrician. Dr. Parker later gave up part of his success to become a Planned Parenthood medical director.
After George Tiller, one of few abortion doctors in Kansas, was assassinated in his church in 2009, Parker left Planned Parenthood and flies from his home base in Chicago for a few days every month to Mississippi to provide reproductive health care, including abortion procedures.
Parker was a boy preacher in Baptist churches prior to his medical career.
Dr. Parker works at the Pink House, the last standing abortion clinic in Mississippi and also a project of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Jackson Women’s Health Organization is constantly under attack – both verbally and physically. Earlier in 2015 the Pink House was vandalized by a masked assailant who knocked over several security cameras and damaged the state mandated generator. Despite assassinations and attacks on his field,
Dr. Parker told Esquire Magazine in 2014 that he refuses to fear for his life because, he says, “if I’m that anxious, they’ve already taken my life.”
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Dr. Parker says that for protestors, “it’s hard for them to accept to accept that I do abortions because I’m a Christian.” However, it was Dr. Parker’s faith that encouraged him to read about civil rights and feminism. He began to think about his mother, sisters, and grandmother who lost their lives during childbirth and soon became a believer in reproductive justice, the idea that reproductive rights help women rise out of poverty.
Dr. Parker is prominently featured in the documentary,
“The Last Clinic," by filmmaker Maisie Crow. "The Last Clinic" follows the history of abortion in the United States, focusing on the pro-life climate of the south. The documentary follows Dr. Parker and his practice in the Pink House as well as Miriam, a Pink House patient who, contrary to her family’s Christian beliefs, had two abortions.
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