Seven -- the Number of Pro-Life Bills Headed to Mississippi Senate
by Rusty Pugh and Jody Brown
March 18, 2004
(AgapePress) - A Mississippi pro-life leader says seven important pro-life bills have passed the state House and have a very good chance of passing the Senate and becoming law.The group of legislative measures -- House Bills 352, 727, 1038, 1289, 1525, 1612, and 1625 -- deal with critical pro-life issues ranging from clinic safety, to reporting of abortion complications, to protecting infants who are subject to being killed even after birth. Terry Herring, legislative director for Pro-Life Mississippi, says one bill (H.B. 1038) would prevent clinics from performing abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
"House Bill 1038 would restrict the abortion clinics to the first trimester," Herring explains. "They currently are doing abortions up to 16 weeks [of pregnancy], and we have found that most of the danger and many of the injuries are happening in the weeks following that 12-week period, some time into the second trimester."
Another key bill (H.B. 1525) -- known as the Abortion Complication Reporting Act -- deals with clinics reporting complications resulting from an abortion procedure.
"What we're trying to do here is identify how many women are actually being injured by abortion in Mississippi," the pro-life spokesperson says. "We find that a hundred women a year are being injured -- we find that this is far too many. Even though abortion is supposed to be 'safe and legal,' it is legal -- but it is not safe."
Among the other bills are an act to prohibit human cloning (H.B. 727), a bill to define the killing of an unborn child as either murder or manslaughter (H.B. 1289), legislation that would prohibit allowing a child delivered during a failed abortion to die (H.B. 1612), and a bill that would prevent a health-care provider, institution, or payer from being required to participate in a service that violates his or her conscience (H.B. 1625). H.B. 352 would amend state code to include the death of an unborn child in the wrongful death statute.
Herring says her group is elated that all seven bills have passed the House, where pro-life legislation is more likely to face problems. The bills now go to the Senate. Herring says pro-lifers around the state are optimistic that Republican Governor Haley Barbour would sign them all into law.
