Abortion

Mississipi to Bring Back “Heartbeat Ban” this Legislative Session and Personhood in 2014

If Mississippi's only clinic does manage to stay open it may not matter, since abortion might be banned all together anyway.

Governor Phil Bryant. (Urban Christian News)

Recently, I wondered what sort of extreme bill we might see in some of the most rabidly anti-choice states in the country this legislative session. Now, Mississippi has answered. They are planning to ban all abortions as early as 28 days post-conception, in some cases before a woman even knows she’s pregnant.

Yes, the governor is discussing a heartbeat ban.

Via the Commercial Appeal:

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant told several dozen pastors and other abortion opponents Thursday that he supports a bill that would ban the procedure once a fetal heartbeat can be detected.

It’s similar to a bill that was filed and killed by a Senate chairman last year.”It would tell that mother, ‘Your child has a heartbeat,”‘ Republican Bryant said at a Pro-Life Mississippi luncheon at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson.

Many in the audience nodded and some quietly said, “Praise Jesus,” as Bryant recalled how he and his wife, Deborah, were married seven years before they conceived their first child, a daughter who’s now grown and married. He said they prayed to become parents.

“You can hear that heartbeat at five or six weeks now,” Bryant said. “Your child has such a dramatic opportunity to live, with a heartbeat.”

Last year legislation was proposed to do a heartbeat ban, but never made it to the full senate for a vote. Democrat Hob Bryan, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, refused to let the bill out for a vote saying he didn’t want to waste anyone’s time on something so blatantly unconstitutional. Even the GOP’s attempts to piggy back the measure onto other bills to get it out for a full vote were continuously blocked, and eventually the proposal died.

Will 2013 be a different story? With legislators itching to finally shut down Jackson Women’s Health Organization, passing bills that actually ban abortion seems somewhat redundant, but may speak to a lack of confidence that their TRAP bill will ever actually be enforced.

Bryant himself remains eager to see the clinic shuttered. According to Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s Jeffery Hess, Bryant told the anti-choice religious leaders that, “My goal of course is to shut it down. Now, we will follow the laws. The bill is in the courts now related to the physicians and their association with the hospitals. But certainly if I had the power to do so legally, I would do so tomorrow.”

As if Bryant and his fellow anti-choice state politicians aren’t being obvious enough that they are enacting their own agenda rather than that of the voters they represent, a “personhood” amendment may soon be heading back to the Mississippi residents again. Despite the amendment failing to pass in 2011, a concurrent resolution proposed by State Representative Andy Gipson hopes to revive the mission to grant legal rights to fertilized eggs with another go at a constitutional amendment.

This time, in order to try to woo more people into voting yes, the amendment will not apply to IVF treatments, treating ectopic pregnancies (at least, not once they are “life-threatening”) or to “contraception or birth control not killing a person.” The bill does not state whether or not they consider hormonal contraception, IUD, or emergency contraception to be a “killing a person” form of birth control or not. If passed, the amendment would be up for a vote in 2014.

Gipson proposed the same resolution in 2012.

With the clinic in limbo, Bryant and his supporters are gearing up to put into place a back up plan to end legal, safe abortion in the state. In that case, these may be just the first of many attacks on reproductive health that will be supported by a governor who told religious leaders that he would not be a “moderate” on abortion.