Mississippi Abortion Amendment Fails

I wrote this entry awhile ago, but because I am technologically-challenged and could not figure out how to sign into my blog (because of the new formatting), I am only now posting it.

I, for one, am breathing a huge sigh of relief that the voters of Mississippi rejected Proposition 26 yesterday.  Proposition 26 sought to end all abortions and cloning by redefining the start of life.  (See Justice Potter Stewart’s remarks during the Roe v. Wade oral arguments).  Specifically, it said:

Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi: SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.

As pointed out by blogger Burns Strider, several influential policy-shaping groups that would normally represent opposing viewpoints came together on this issue and advocated against it.  See  Burns Strider, 6 Reasons Mississippians Said No to “Personhood” Amendment, The Huffington Post, generally available at www.thehuffingtonpost.com, accessed Nov. 9, 2011.  Strider points to the joining of (1) physicians and medical groups, (2) clergy (including the Catholic Bishop), (3) The Governor, who said he would vote for it but acknowledged having multiple concerns about the issue [sounds like lip service to me], (4) the Mississippi NAACP, and (5) Mississippians for Health Families [Strider said this was the faction that organized the opponents and drove the grassroots movement].  As I’ve pointed out in previous blogs, when normally-opposing factions are able to join forces for a particular (and often very narrowly-tailored) purpose, surprising policy outcomes develop.  For example, think of how the global community (which wasn’t exactly known for its racial tolerance) joined with Martin Luther King, Jr’s movement once he wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail to put pressure on the US government about its blatant injustices.  [As a head’s up, this joining of normally polarized forces is currently happening in Pennsylvania and New York where the environmentalists and the more conservative hunters are joining to oppose hydraulic fracturing, i.e. “fracking, which they believe is poisoning the local water and subsequently killing deer, among other effects.  For an article explain fracking in Pennsylvania and New York and the ensuing public policy debates, see Elizabeth Kolbert, Burning Love, The New Yorker, Dec. 5, 2011.]  Thus, it is not surprising that when these groups, which appealed to different parts of the Mississippi citizenry, combined around one issue they succeeded.  Obviously what is astounding is that such groups were able to join together in what has become a polarized political atmosphere, especially around the issue of abortion. 

                  From a legal standpoint, there are several disconcerting issues with the proposed amendment.  First, it is to be an amendment in the constitution – constitutions define how a government works and how the body of people exists, both in relation to other bodies of people and internally, how the people within the body relate to one another.  To change a constitution and “define life,” as this proposed amendment does is to interject politics and religious belief into what is supposed to be a time-less, and therefore apolitical, document.  Second, the proposal has been notoriously criticized for not providing an exception for the mother’s life.  Rather, it seeks to eliminate abortion by making it a felony, in all cases.  Thus, the Justice Connors’s concern in Planned Parenthood v. Casey about the potential dangers women faced when pregnant and in abusive relationships would no longer be protected.  Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 887-94 (1992).  Expanding that critique, opponents were certainly correct when the law did not allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest.  The proponents responded that abortion is never permissible, regardless of the circumstances.  This, in effect, forces the independent mother to continue being a victim of the crime and abuse already levied against her. 

                  Overall, it is promising that the voters of Mississippi, a relatively conservative state, recognized the need to keep abortion politics out of the state’s constitution.