A bill banning abortion in most cases will head to the Mississippi House for a vote, having been approved by a House committee Tuesday.
Under the bill, statewide, abortion in Mississippi would only be legal in cases where the mother’s health is at risk. If passed, the bill would make Mississippi the second state in the nation to restrict abortion to that extent, making the procedure illegal in cases of incest and rape.
Gov. Haley Barbour’s spokesperson Pete Smith said the bill, if passed, would be a positive step for Mississippi.
“Mississippi has been named one of the safest states for an unborn child, and the governor strongly supports that,” Smith said.
Smith said the governor has expressed interest in signing the bill, but it still has a long way to go before he can do so.
“This bill has a lot of legislative process left. He said the other day to the media that he would review the bill before signing it,” Smith said. “We just have to wait and see what happens.”
Senate Bill 2922 originally required a woman to have the chance to view a sonogram or listen to the heartbeat of her unborn child before she would agree to the abortion. The House Public Health and Human Services committee Tuesday afternoon altered the bill and inserted the abortion ban as an amendment.
“It’s a case of the Legislature practicing medicine. That’s the long and short of it,” Dr. Robert Collins said. “If they want to practice medicine, [they can] go to medical school and get the five-figure debt that all M.D.s have.”
South Dakota approved a similar ban on abortions last week, fueling concern that the law isn’t for preserving life at the state level but overturning Roe v. Wade, a 1973 court decision that made the procedure legal.
Although Collins describes himself as a servant of his church, he said he is not confident about the government’s motivation for the bill.
“It’s a political gambit by a very conservative legislature to try and get their face, get their name in front of the Supreme Court,” Collins said. “What it’s all about is to overturn Roe v. Wade by appeal in a right-wing Supreme Court. It has nothing to do with saving [Mississippi] lives.”
In 2000, there were six clinics statewide that were capable of performing the procedure. Today, one remains: the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Although its media consultant was not available for comment, an estimated 3,000 abortions were performed last year by the clinic, according to The Clarion-Ledger. Contrasted with earlier records from 2000, the figures indicate the abortion rate is going down.
Take the number of abortions performed last year and divide that by the number of babies born last year, and an alarming statistic emerges: one out of every 77 babies conceived in Mississippi is aborted.
Junior political science major Clay Taylor said he believes the government is in place to protect the people.
“If they’re willing to protect those people, they should also be willing to protect the unborn as well. I don’t think it’s so much a moral as an ethical issue,” Taylor said. “They should protect all life, because in my opinion, life begins at conception.”
Collins said if the bill is passed, it will negatively impact the state on several levels.
“Those who can go to other states [to get an abortion] will go to other states, and those who can’t will become parents. All we need in this state is more single parents,” Collins said. “We lead the nation in teen pregnancy, obesity, poverty … so what do they want to do? They want to increase the problem.”
Collins said he also criticizes the singular exception to the abortion bill.
“They have no exceptions except the health of the mother, and that is such a nebulous term. What health risks are there, specifically, that the mother would sustain?”
Collins said. “If the circumstances don’t meet [the law’s] criteria, they’d come after the doctor for violating the law.”
Junior public relations major Kelli Cox says that if she were in that situation, it wouldn’t matter.
“I couldn’t have an abortion even if my health were at risk because of the way I was raised. I believe God would take care of the situation,” Cox said.
Cox added that it all comes down to one simple word.
“It’s all about responsibility. We need to take responsibility for what we do beforehand and not take advantage of the fact that we can have an abortion later,” Cox said.