He's protested abortions outside Mississippi's sole clinic for years. Now he might retire.

“I’ll probably get to fish,” said David Lane, an anti-abortion rights activist who demonstrates regularly outside the Jackson clinic at the center of the Supreme Court case.

JACKSON, Miss. — For 38 years, David Lane has stood outside abortion clinics across Mississippi, trying to dissuade the patients who were seeking a form of reproductive health care that has been protected since 1973. 

On Tuesday, he stood in the street outside the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last abortion clinic in the state. Wearing a cap that nodded to his past as an Army medic, he waved pamphlets at passersby. 

In a few weeks, the choice Lane was seeking to influence may no longer be available in Mississippi. 

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the legitimacy Tuesday of a leaked draft opinion, first reported by Politico, indicating that the majority of the court favors overturning Roe v. Wade. While the court hasn’t issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, if it follows the draft opinion a Mississippi law banning abortions with few exceptions would go into effect. 

And Lane, 78, who is outside the clinic frequently, would begin spending his time differently.  

“I’ll probably get to fish a little bit,” he said.

While the deepest consequences of the pending decision will ultimately fall on people of reproductive age, activists who support and oppose abortion rights are also confronting a new reality. For decades, demonstrators and clinic escorts galvanized by Roe v. Wade have faced off outside abortion clinics. Now, they’re at the precipice of their life’s work, or nightmare, being fulfilled.

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Derenda Hancock, who helps shield patients at the Jackson clinic from protesters, started her morning on Tuesday much as she has for almost a decade. She put on her rainbow-striped vest identifying her as a member of the volunteers known as the Pink House Defenders, a reference to the facility’s bubblegum exterior, and kept watch as patients began to trickle in.

“My people are tough,” she said, referring to the team that shows up every day to support patients. “They’re strong. They knew what to expect. We just didn’t know it was yesterday.”