When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade Friday, it ruled that the legality of abortions should be determined by each state.

The Mississippi Legislature was ready for that.

Or was it?

In 2006, the state legislature passed a bill that said abortion would be illegal in Mississippi if ever the US Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade. The ban would go into effect 10 days after the state attorney general verified the US Supreme Court ruling.

Mississippi was one of 13 states to have passed these types of “trigger laws.”

But on Monday, the same day Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch verified the ruling and started the 10-day countdown that would shutter the state’s only abortion clinic, a suit was filed to stop the trigger law from going into effect.

The clinic operators, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization (JWHO), have filed a suit in Hinds County Chancery Court to stop the trigger law from going into effect on the grounds that it violates the Mississippi Constitution.

The Mississippi Center for Justice (MCJ), the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP are representing JWHO in the case, citing a 1998 case — Pro-Choice Mississippi vs. Fordice — where the state supreme court affirmed that Mississippians have a legal right to an abortion under the state constitution.

In that case, a group of women’s health clinics asked the state supreme court to overturn legislation that required a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion and requiring thee consent of both parents or guardians before a minor could have an abortion.

At the time, it seemed like a partial victory for the plaintiffs. The court struck down the parental consent statute, but left in place the 24-hour waiting period.

Now, 24 years later, the ruling may be the basis for keeping abortion legal in the state, at least for now.

In that case, the majority opinion, written by then-Justice Michael Sullivan, stated, “No right is held more sacred … than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, no aspect of life is more personal and private than those that have to do with one’s own reproductive system,” and “the state constitutional right to privacy includes an implied right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.”

It is important to note that that 1998 ruling is not nullified by Friday’s US Supreme Court decision. In fact, Friday’s ruling affirms the state’s right to make its own abortion laws.

It’s difficult to say how exactly the suit filed Monday will play out.

But even if the suit succeeds in Chancery Court, it’s likely that it will serve only to delay a ban on abortions in the state. The case seems destined to return to the Mississippi Supreme Court for the final say on the matter and our current state court, much like the current U.S. Supreme Court, is now an arm of the Republican Party, as its ruling in the 2021 medical marijuana case clearly demonstrated.

In that case, the state’s high court struck down a voter-approved amendment to the state constitution creating a medical marijuana program on a minor technicality, a single word in the statute that had no bearing on the merits of the amendment. The state’s high court proved then, and will prove yet again, that it is all too willing to do the state GOP’s bidding.

There is no independent judiciary in the state of Mississippi, and there probably hasn’t been one for a quite long time.

As the case plays out through the court system it will eventually run into a dead-end at the Mississippi Supreme Court, which also like the current U.S. Supreme Court, will ignore years of precedent and re-interpret the state Constitution to suit the state GOP.

That will buy time for abortion-rights groups and advocates to plot the future of women’s reproductive rights in our state.

But ultimately it will affirm what should be clearly evident since Friday.

A defining element that has until now separated the United States from virtually every other nation in history is the concept of it being “a nation of laws, not of men.”

Our nation, and our state, is now a nation and state of men, not of laws.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

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