Mississippi pro-choice activist fired on International Women’s Day

Catholic Charities fired a Mississippi employee on International Women’s Day for discussing her former pro-choice advocacy work in a recent magazine article.

Lori Gregory is the former program director of Hope Haven, a children’s crisis mental health facility in Jackson, Mississippi. Hope Haven provides free counseling for at-risk adolescents without private insurance, many of whom are in foster care. Gregory had worked for Catholic Charities since 2002, beginning as a volunteer and working her way up to program director. She was fired unexpectedly Wednesday morning during a meeting with the local bishop, in reaction to a feature article in Find It Fondren’s recent women’s issue.

Entitled Stand Up, Be Heard, the article lauded Gregory’s social-advocacy work, her old op-ed columns (penned under a pseudonym), and her outspoken opposition to Missississippi’s 2011 anti-abortion legislation Proposition 26, which, the article claimed, “threaten[ed] … Gregory’s beliefs”. The article then commended her volunteer work at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a local abortion clinic.

Her employers at the Catholic diocese cited the article as a violation of the church’s code of ethics in a termination letter that they presented her during this morning’s meeting.

“If I’ve got to go down, I’d rather go down for something I really, really believe in,” Gregory said. “Now the International Women’s Day thing is just the Band-Aid of irony on it.”

Gregory had been warned about making pro-choice statements before. In 2013, she wrote an op-ed article for Slate about her work at the Jackson Women’s Health Center. Her employers reprimanded her for the article and made her promise to stop speaking out in favor of abortion rights and to end her volunteer work at the abortion clinic. These terms were presented as mandatory conditions of employment.

Gregory agreed to stop. “It broke my heart. It was one of my most favorite things to do,” she said. “I spent two years of my life intensively involved in social justice work with women here … And it was a great joy of mine but I also knew that I needed to have a job.

“And at the time, I was having some health issues. I needed to have insurance. All the regular stuff that you need as an American. I was not in a position to give up my employment so I elected to no longer write or do the justice work or do my job. And I was very sad about it for a long time. Which is why this time, I’m not going to be quiet.” Gregory also said Hope Haven was the only provider in Mississippi that offered crisis services to kids without private insurance.

The article in Find it Fondren’s says that Gregory still escorts women at the abortion clinic, but she says she stopped volunteering after her talk with her bosses in 2013, which Gregory thinks was a misunderstanding with the journalist. She believes it’s unfair that an article mentioning her previous pro-choice advocacy work could be grounds for termination.

Maureen Smith, the communications director for the Catholic diocese of Jackson, would not comment specifically on Gregory’s termination. But she said employees of the Catholic Church were expected to follow the church’s core teachings.

“As a church, we are a pro-life entity. When you work for the Catholic Church, you work for the church in all aspects. There is a pro-life ethic in everything we do. I don’t know how you can work for the Catholic Church and be a part of a pro-life ethic and be in conflict with it at the same time,” Smith said. “Why would you do that? If I was walking around saying things against church teachings, that’s hypocritical and that’s problematic.”

Robert Tuttle, a law professor at George Washington University, said federal anti-discrimination law allowed religious organizations to discriminate on the basis of religion. “Courts have had some doubts and questions about what it means to discriminate on the basis of religion, but one of the things they have done is defer strongly to the core doctrines and beliefs of the organization, and if someone is not in compliance with them, then they may be terminated,” he said.

Gregory is a single mother with a seven-year-old daughter. She’s not worried about telling her daughter about her firing.

“I think that I will just tell her that I lost my job because I believed in something,” Gregory said. “And there are a few things that I know that she believes in real strongly as well. First one is that girls are awesome. And I think that if she knows that about me, then that’s a good thing. But I also had a mother that walked out of a job in the 70s due to a pay-gap issue. So I had a good model.”

The Catholic diocese confirmed that Hope Haven would continue to operate.

Mississippi pro-choice activist fired on International Women’s Day

One-third of Mississippi population will have diabetes by 2030, medical professional warns

A third of the population of Mississippi will have diabetes by 2030 and need pricey care to remain alive, which will have a devastating influence both on them and the state’s economy, in accordance to a foremost doctor.

Dr Richard deShazo at the University of Mississippi health-related centre in Jackson, is one particular of a group of doctors and academics who are striving to warn families about the dangers and consequences of weight problems and educate them how to avoid their children gaining excess weight and damaging their wellness. Mississippi has extended been the state with the highest obesity fee in the United States, dropping only somewhat in the most recent government survey to second spot to Louisiana exactly where 34.7% of the population is now obese, in contrast with 34.6% in Mississippi. Thirteen states, primarily in the south, have weight problems rates of far more than 30%.

The circumstance in Mississippi is dire, said deShazo. “We’re going to have about a third of our population with diabetes by 2030. If you look at the economics of that, the downstream disability, it is very difficult to calculate the lengthy-phrase results but it really is very tough to tell how the state can help itself,” stated deShazo. The 2012 “F as in Fat” report by the Believe in for America’s Well being and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found Mississippi had the highest rate of variety two diabetes in the US, at twelve.three%, primarily based on 2010 figures. At the recent fee of improve, mentioned deShazo, that would be a third of the population by 2030. The ten states with the highest diabetes prices are all in the south.

Diabetes is one particular of the most problematic consequences of weight problems, along with higher blood stress, stroke, cancer and damage to the joints of the leg. All of this outcomes in disability. Individuals with superior diabetes have kidney failure and will finish up on standard dialysis to keep alive and are at threat of blindness and foot amputations.

The overall health issues are hitting people who would typically be earning cash. “We’re seeing 30- and forty-year-old individuals obtaining variety 2 diabetes that we used to see in 50- and 60-12 months-old folks,” said deShazo. “So now that disability curve is shifting more and more to the left, to a younger and younger below- or unemployable population.

“The state division of well being is beneath-funded and the university is genuinely about the only component appropriate now that has ample doctors and overall health pros in it to consider a leadership role, so what we’ve tried to do is do as much as we can with what we have.”

Main efforts by the University of Mississippi healthcare centre staff may be paying off with a drop in the child obesity prices, which has been encouraging, but is only in the white, more affluent population and does not include African Americans or poor whites, explained deShazo. Health literacy – the fundamental knowing of what triggers you to get ill – is really minimal in the state.

Mississippi does not have the healthcare companies in place to cope and 19% of the population, around 275,000, are uninsured – almost one particular in 5. The state has turned down federal cash for Medicaid expansion, which would have manufactured somewhere in between 200,000 and 400,000 more folks eligible. It has the lowest fee of doctors to sufferers in the United States. Several people at danger of diabetes and other overall health issues do not have entry to major care, the place they can be advised on the prevention of sickness and monitored. The figures are worst for the people of the Mississippi Delta, who have very lower incomes, if any, and lower amounts of schooling.

The University of Mississippi medical centre has a federal “navigator” grant, to support people through the complexities of signing up for well being insurance coverage on the government internet site. The only other organisation in the state with a grant is the Oak Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Hernando. Its pastor, the Rev Michael Minor, has been operating to minimize weight problems since 1996, when he arrived, by changing the kind of meals accessible at church gatherings and hanging a “No Fry Zone” notice in the kitchen.

Very first lady Michelle Obama, no doubt keen to support any efforts in weight problems-ridden Mississippi, invited him to the White Property as part of her “Let’s Move” campaign. Taking on enrolment to well being insurance coverage underneath the ACA seemed like a natural progression to Minor.

“Our complete ministry is well being of mind, physique and spirit. If you can’t see the doctor on a regular basis, you are going to be sick a couple of techniques,” he said.

“I think it’s everybody’s correct. We speak about having the ideal healthcare [in the planet] in America. We have got the best healthcare in America for some people in America. For everybody else, we have received the worst healthcare, since they have received no access to it. I didn’t see it right up until I knew some members who had been doing work. Either the work did not give some positive aspects or they could not afford what there was. They are the working poor.

“I had a member who just essential to get a prescription and the prescription was $ 300 for [drugs to prevent] blood clots. She didn’t have $ 300.”

Minor, a Harvard graduate in economics, utilized for a grant and was awarded $ 320,000 to cover forty counties. They now have 82 navigators in total, the huge majority part-time. “I realised the best thing for this work was individuals in the community who are almost certainly only accessible in the evenings and weekends,” he stated.

One-third of Mississippi population will have diabetes by 2030, medical professional warns