Mississippi bill would find anyone who performs an abortion guilty of murder

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - A new bill introduced into the Mississippi legislature would find anyone who performs or induces an abortion guilty of murder.

The bill, written by Rep. Dan Eubanks of DeSoto, would also make it a felony for anyone to willfully cause an abortion.

This comes a little over a year after a federal appeals court stated that Mississippi’s ban on abortion at 15 weeks was unconstitutional, siding with a 2018 ruling from U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves.

State legislators would come back and pass a more restrictive law to ban most abortions at about six weeks. Reeves blocked that, too.

In October of 2020, Mississippi filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking clarification on the unconstitutionality of the 15-week abortion ban. State leaders at the time said that the Court may be willing to consider the case.

The ultimate goal, said a professor of law at the Mississippi College School of Law, is to get the 15-week abortion ban upheld or have Roe v. Wade repealed or significantly scaled back.

Read all of House Bill 338 HERE.