People in Mississippi could face life imprisonment for helping teenagers get abortions
Michelle Colon, an abortion rights leader in state, spoke to me about the state of affairs there.
Mississippi’s legislature has taken the most drastic step of any state in trying to prevent minors from getting abortions without parental consent. A new bill proposes life imprisonment for people who do so.
It’s known as the Safeguarding Teens from Out-of-State Procedures Act, or STOP Act. It doesn’t matter if the abortion is performed in another state under the bill’s wording. And the assistance can be wide-ranging. That can mean lodging, shelter, transportation, or money that can help a minor girl procure an abortion or obtain abortion-inducing drugs while avoiding detection by or the involvement of her parents or legal guardian.
“They have all the votes to carry out anti-abortion legislation,” said Michelle Colon, an abortion rights leader in the state.
“And not just anti-abortion legislation, but basically anti-human rights legislation.”
Activists in the state are confronted with a stark reality there. Antiabortionism is now the driving force within the state’s political structure. As I’ve written about before, there is a connection between the white supremacist movement and the one pushing for abortion bans. A documentarian working there told me as much.
After I visited Jackson to document the aftermath of Roe’s downfall, some questionable things happened that led me to believe there was an attempt to race-bait to divide white and black women and to preserve power for the white men who dominate Mississippi politics.
Mississippi has a ballot initiative process, but it was seriously limited in 2021 after the state supreme court struck down an amendment that would have expanded Medicaid. They have since proposed legislation to forbid abortion from being an issue they would consider.
“I don't believe a ballot initiative will ever come up in Mississippi, not right now,” Colon said.
“But we need to be clear with these ballot initiatives. You have one side that wins, and then one side wants to sue.”