Mississippi House votes to ban abortions after 15 weeks
Update: The Mississippi House voted 79-31 on Friday in favor of legislation prohibiting abortions beyond 15 weeks. If passed by the Senate and signed into law, Mississippi would be the state with the most pro-life laws.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Judiciary B Committee of the Mississippi House of Representatives approved House Bill 1510, which would ban most abortions after 15 weeks gestation. The legislation will proceed to the full House of Representatives, which is controlled by Republicans. Mississippi currently bans most abortions after 20 weeks. If HB 1510 passes and is signed into law, Mississippi would hold the earliest abortion ban in the nation.
The Washington Post reports:
The bill would allow exceptions if a fetus wouldn’t survive outside the womb, or when the woman is threatened with death or permanent impairment of a “major bodily function.” Those are the same exceptions in the current 20-week ban.
Rep. Andy Gipson, chairman of the Judiciary B Committee, said the bill would protect women from the health risks of late-term abortions. “It is medically proven that these abortions performed after the first trimester are extremely dangerous to the mother’s health,” said Gipson, “in addition to the fact that it forces a very late abortion in the process.”
Diane Derzis, who owns Mississippi’s lone abortion facility in Jackson, says the bill would “absolutely” affect her facility’s operations. Derzis speculates that the bill is part of a plot to flood the court systems with pro-life legislation. “I think that’s part of the plan,” said Derzis, “to get as much anti-abortion legislation headed up through the court system, hoping by the time it gets there, there’s another anti-choice justice.”
While big business abortion will no doubt attempt to portray this legislation as extreme, it could only be viewed as “extreme” from the narrow perspective of radically pro-abortion American culture. A 2014 report published by the Charlotte Lozier Institute revealed that “the United States is one of only seven countries in the world that permit elective abortion past 20 weeks,” and “more than 75% of the countries permitting abortion without restriction as to reason do not permit elective abortions past 12 weeks gestation.”