Mississippi pushes abortion ban at 15 weeks, earliest in US

[TexasTowelie]

JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi lawmakers pushed ahead Friday with a bill to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which would be the earliest ban nationwide and create a possible court challenge.

Mississippi already bans most abortions after 20 weeks. It's tied with North Carolina for the nation's earliest ban.

Members of the Republican-controlled House on Friday passed House Bill 1510 by a vote of 79-31, with Republicans and some Democrats supporting it. The measure would allow exceptions if a woman's life is endangered or a fetus has a severe abnormality. The bill goes to the state Senate for more debate.

House Judiciary B Committee Chairman Andy Gipson, a Braxton Republican, said Mississippi wants to prevent women from being adversely affected by abortion.

"Women deserve real health care, not some fake health care that involves the destruction of human life and a woman's health," said Gipson, a lawyer and Baptist minister.

Read more: http://www.startribune.com/mississippi-lawmakers-debate-banning-abortion-after-15-weeks/472386273/

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Oh, dear lord.

To me it's quite simple. If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one. Otherwise, don't concern yourself with anyone else's reproductive choices.

I can say that there are certain cases where I might choose to have an abortion and another woman might choose to have the baby. NEITHER ONE OF US IS WRONG.

Here's a personal example. When I was first pregnant with my second child at age 37 (and would be 38 by the time the baby would be born) I was offered amniocentesis to check for Down Syndrome. I turned it down, somewhat to the consternation of my doctor and my husband. I honestly felt that having a child with Down Syndrome was not the end of the world and was willing to take that chance and have a baby with DS. As it happened, my baby was completely normal, and so perhaps I dodged a bullet. But I don't feel that way. I was completely okay with the possibility of having a DS baby. But if someone else here were to post: "I was that age when I was pregnant, I had the testing, the baby had Downs, and I had an abortion", my response would be: You made the right decision for yourself. There is no one right answer. My thinking I could raise such a child has absolutely NOTHING to do with someone else's thinking that they could not possibly raise such a child. To repeat myself, there is no one answer.

And so, abortion is a completely private and personal decision.

All of those people who want to impose forced birthing on women seem never to have been faced with hard choices about damaged babies.

On top of it all, there is almost NO help for people with babies who are not the picture perfect normal babies who will grow up to be normal adults.