Pro-Life Doctors Want to Reverse Old Mississippi Case Declaring Right to Abortion

A national coalition of pro-life physicians is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to overturn a 40-year-old precedent that they say wrongly declared a state constitutional right to abortion.

The state currently bands abortions but the pro-life doctors want the old pro-abortion case law off the books.

The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) filed the petition, arguing that Mississippi’s constitution contains no right to abortion and that the court rulings suggesting otherwise must be reversed in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which held that “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.”

At the heart of the request is Pro-Choice Mississippi v. Fordice, the 1998 Mississippi Supreme Court decision that struck down parts of the state’s parental-consent and mandatory-delay laws by holding that the Mississippi Constitution’s privacy protections include a right to abortion.

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“Mississippi’s Constitution does not protect abortion, and the Fordice decision was wrongly decided,” the petition states. The filing contends that nothing in the text, history, or tradition of the state constitution supports an abortion right and that Fordice’s reasoning “cannot be reconciled” with Dobbs, which returned authority to states to regulate or prohibit abortion.

The move comes as Mississippi’s trigger ban on abortions, enacted in 2018 and activated on June 27, 2022, after Dobbs overruled Roe v. Wade, remains in effect.

The law, governed by Section 41-41-45 of the Mississippi Code, bans abortions and protects babies from conception, with exceptions only for cases involving a formal charge of rape or to preserve the mother’s life.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch certified the ban’s activation in 2022, stating, “Mississippi’s laws to promote life are solid and thanks to the Court’s clear and strong opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, they can now go into effect.”

She added, “As we have said throughout this case, Roe v. Wade presented a false choice betw

een a woman’s future and her child’s life. As we proceed in this post-Roe world, the people of Mississippi and of all the states will be able to fully engage in the work of both empowering women and promoting life.”

Fitch further noted, “The Supreme Court very clearly held in Dobbs that the appropriate standard for courts to use for challenges to state abortion laws is rational-basis review,” emphasizing that Mississippi’s pro-life laws would be upheld.

The state’s only abortion business closed following the ban, making Mississippi the 10th state to effectively prohibit abortions after Dobbs.

Some lower courts have cited the lingering Fordice precedent when questioning the ban’s scope, creating what AAPLOG calls dangerous legal confusion.

“As physicians who have taken an oath to do no harm, we cannot remain silent while an erroneous court decision continues to be used to justify the intentional killing of unborn children,” said Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of AAPLOG.

The Mississippi Attorney General’s office, which defended the state’s laws in the Dobbs case, has previously signaled openness to revisiting pre-Dobbs rulings. A spokesman for Attorney General Lynn Fitch declined to comment on the pending petition.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has not yet indicated whether it will take up the case.