If District 39 Rep. Dana McLean leaned into one message Tuesday at the Columbus Rotary Club, it was doing more for women.
McLean is serving her first term in the legislature. She was elected in 2019. McLean works as a Realtor and is also a lawyer.
In the wake of the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, she said the state must do more for women and children.
In June the court used a Mississippi lawsuit, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, to strike down the federal right to an abortion, instead turning the issue over to states. In the wake of the decision many states, including Mississippi, have partially or wholly banned abortions.
“There are so many single mothers, and we must do more for the education of their children,” McLean told Rotary club members at Lion Hills Center. “We need to see more of a pre-kindergarten program and more affordable child care. We also need to improve the foster care program, make adoption more affordable and vet those future parents very well.”
Child care for new mothers also needs to be extended, she said.
“We’re telling these women they must have their babies, and now we have to step up for them,” she said. “We need to give Medicaid to those mothers for longer than 60 days. We have so many teenagers having babies, and they’re not ready. They need help. We need to extend it up to 12 months.”
The state finally, after years of effort, passed an equal pay act, she said, calling it “one of the most important bills we passed this year.”
“Mississippi was the very last state to pass an equal pay law,” she said. “It’s a shame. For years there have been legislators that were pushing this. We and Alabama were the last two. Alabama beat us to the draw.”
The law applies both ways and isn’t just for women, she said.
“(The Mississippi Equal Pay Act) provides no employer shall pay an employee a wage at a rate less than an employee of the opposite sex is being paid,” she said. “That’s with all the qualifications being equal, similar skills, similar experience, similar education.”
McLean said she authored a bill changing the legal definition of rape, but it did not pass.
“Mississippi statute defines rape as ‘lavishing of a female of previously chaste character,’” she said. “Does that sound like something from the 1800s? It does to me.”
She said prosecutors are using the sexual assault statute to prosecute rape, but she wants to update the actual rape statute.
“That bill passed overwhelmingly in the House, and it failed in the Senate,” she said. “Leadership had a problem with the removal of the spousal defense. There is a defense if you are married to the victim. That is something that really needs to be corrected.”
Rape also does not just happen to females, she said.
“My bill also stated it happens to a person, not just a female,” she said.
In other action, McLean highlighted the passage of Buddy’s Law, which has to do with the torture of animals.
“Buddy is a dog that was burned severely by a child,” she said. “… There was nothing that could be done to the child. Buddy’s Law will require psychiatric evaluation for any child charged with ‘the intentional torturing, mutilating, maiming, burning, starving to death, crushing, disfiguring, drowning, suffocating or impaling’ of a domesticated dog or cat.”
The dog survived the encounter and was treated at the Mississippi State University College of Veterinary medicine. Buddy attended the signing, McLean said.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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