Diane Derzis is the owner of the last remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi and she is no stranger to some strange quotes.
Through botched abortions, dozens of pro-life laws providing women the protection for their medical health her facility ignores, and lawsuits stopping the state from having her abortion practitioners get admitting privileges at local hospitals, Derzis has kept the Jackson Women’s Health Organization going.
Derzis started working as an abortion center counselor shortly after the first place opened in Alabama in the 1970s. And she talks openly about the abortion she had when she was 20, newly married and in college. She said didn’t want children, and knew immediately she wanted to have an abortion of her 12-week-old unborn baby. Derzis said her mother told her she’d regret it, but she hasn’t.
“I thank God every day I had that abortion,” said Derzis, who later divorced and doesn’t have children. “It was not a great experience, but you know what? I had a safe abortion. And that’s what counts.”
Although the abortion industry claims abortion practitioners care about women and abortion should be between a woman and her [abortion] doctor (whom she’s never met before the abortion), Derzis says the abortionist was “gruff and disrespectful.”
Previously, Derzis said God told her to keep killing babies in abortion.
“If they think they’re going to make me feel badly about what I do … not gonna happen,” said Derzis, a 59-year-old Virginia native who has lived in Alabama for decades.
Earlier this month, outside Derzis’ shop in Mississippi’s capital city, police officers tried to keep a couple dozen protesters and abortion supporters apart. Derzis stood on the sidewalk as the Rev. Philip “Flip” Benham, one of her most vocal critics, asked her if she’d repent and said he would pray for her.
“I just love prayers. I’m the glad recipient of prayers,” Derzis said, looking past Benham.
Just as protesters say they are following God’s will by praying outside abortion shops and trying to talk women out of abortions, Derzis says she, too, is led by divine guidance to provide women a safe place to terminate pregnancies.
“I feel like God wants me to do this job,” said Derzis, who has a raspy smoker’s voice and a penchant for brightly painted fingernails and chunky jewelry.
Though she may say strange things, more importantly she operates poorly-run abortion places that put the lives of both women and unborn children at risk.
In 2012, Derzis was ordered to shut down her New Woman All Women abortion shop in Birmingham, Alabama, after inspectors found 76 pages of violations following the hospitalization of three patients in one day for abortion complications.
[Ertelt, Dec 24, 2015, Washington, DC, http://www.lifenews.com/2015/12/24/abortion-clinic-owner-i-thank-god-every-day-i-had-an-abortion/ ]