Remember all that talk at last week’s Supreme Court hearing about the Mississippi state law that bans abortions after 15 weeks.
You had Chief Justice John Roberts saying Mississippi’s limit of 15 weeks was “not a dramatic departure from viability” and gave women enough time to choose to end their pregnancies.
The Mississippi law was always intended to overthrow the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that states may not ban abortions before the point of fetal viability, which generally is estimated to be between 22 and 24 weeks.
The Supreme Court’s conservative justices indicated they were ready to uphold the Mississippi law, and even go as far as overturning Roe entirely.
Mississippi Solicitor General Scott G. Stewart’s arguments in favor of the 15-week ban represented a deceptive bait-and-switch. That’s because if Roe is overturned, Mississippi and many other red states has a trigger law which would ban nearly all abortions. Mississippi’s law allows exceptions only in cases of rape and a threat to the life of the mother.
Gov. Tate Reeves spilled the beans in an interview with Jake Tapper Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Tapper asked Reeves whether Mississippi would enforce the nearly total abortion ban if Roe is overturned. Tate’s response:
“That is a Yes, because if you believe as I believe, very strongly, that an innocent, unborn child in the mother's womb is, in fact, a child; the most important word when we talk about “unborn children’ is not `unborn’ but it's `children.’ So yes, I will do everything I can to protect the lives of those children."
Tapper then pointed out to Reeves that rich women would still be able to get abortions even if there was a total ban, but poor women could seek to end their pregnancies in ways that could cause them serious harm if not death.
Reeves’ response was rather cavalier.
"I certainly would hope that that would not be the case," Reeves said. "What I would tell you, Jake, is that since Roe was enacted in 1973, there have been 62 million American babies that have been killed through this process. I think that those babies in their mother's womb don't have the ability to stand up for themselves. That's why they have to have people like me and others around this nation that for years have tried to stand up for unborn children."
Reeves then had the gall to state:
"I think we have to do everything we can as policymakers to improve the quality of public health in our state …. There are a lot of negatives that have come from the pandemic. But one of the hopefully silver linings that come out of dealing with the pandemic over the last year and a half is that we have seen significant investments in infrastructure, both from the state and federal level in our public health system. I think we need to continue to do that. I think that’s important.”
So is Reeves ready to expand Medicaid in his state as allowed under the Affordable Care Act? How about declaring support for President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill that would also expand Medicaid coverage and provide postpartum Medicaid coverage for one year rather than two months.
I don’t think so.
According to the CDC, Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate in the nation. Those most affected are poor people of color.
At Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing lawyer Julie RIkelman of the Center for Reproductive Rights pointed to statistics compiled by the Mississippi Department of Health when she said:
"In Mississippi, it is 75 times more deadly for a person to carry a pregnancy to term than to have an abortion."
Tapper noted that Mississippi ranks nearly last in the country when it comes to childhood hunger. He said a study found that Mississippi ranked 50th when it comes to child well-being, looking at education, health and other factors related to what children need to thrive.
And again the “pro-life” governor obfuscated.
“I perfectly acknowledge that many of those statistics in terms of health outcomes in our state, we are underperforming relative to other states across the nation. It's incumbent upon all of us to work to pass policies to change that."
Reeves has been in office for nearly two years now. There’s no evidence that he’s done anything of consequence to improve health outcomes in his state.