Mississippi’s Attorney General Files Pro-Life Amicus Brief in
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

WASHINGTON – Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch today filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a pro-abortion challenge to a 2018 pro-life Mississippi law.

“We thank Attorney General Fitch for standing strong for the right to life and for the right of duly-elected state legislators to protect the most vulnerable among us,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life (NRLC).

The National Right to Life Committee, the nation’s largest and oldest pro-life group, will also be filing a joint amicus brief with Louisiana Right to Life, NRLC’s Louisiana affiliate.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concerns the state’s “Gestational Age Act” which bans abortions after 15 weeks. In May 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari and this fall will address the question of whether a state has a compelling interest in protecting the right to life prior to viability.

The question before the High Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is whether all prohibitions on abortions performed pre-viability are unconstitutional.

“Today, we know more about the life of a child in the womb than we did fifty years ago when Roe v. Wade and its companion ruling Doe v. Bolton were handed down,” said Tobias. “The medical advances made in our knowledge of unborn children and their care and treatment are astonishing.”

Tobias added, “Today, the viability of an unborn child is dependent on how advanced our technology has become.”

Recognized as the flagship of the pro-life movement, National Right to Life and its state affiliates have led the way in protecting all innocent human life by seeing legislation enacted on the state and federal level that challenges current jurisprudence and educates Americans about the extremism of current abortion law.

“National Right to Life led the debate over partial-birth abortions and pioneered new ground in the abortion debate with the passage of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act,” said Jennifer Popik, J.D., federal legislative director for NRLC. “The legislation banned a particular abortion procedure that was used both before and after what is considered viability.”

Popik continued, “The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was found to be constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 and provides precedent in the Court’s jurisprudence for prohibiting abortions before viability.”

AG Fitch noted,

There are those who would like to believe that Roe v. Wade settled the issue of abortion once and for all. But all it did was establish a special-rules regime for abortion jurisprudence that has left these cases out of step with other Court decisions and neutral principles of law applied by the Court. As a result, state legislatures, and the people they represent, have lacked clarity in passing laws to protect legitimate public interests, and artificial guideposts have stunted important public debate on how we, as a society, care for the dignity of women and their children.

Founded in 1968, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of affiliates in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and more than 3,000 local chapters, is the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization. Recognized as the flagship of the pro-life movement, National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect innocent human life from abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia.

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