Speaker Gunn touts sanctity of life, opposes relaxing state's abortion trigger law
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Jun. 24—JACKSON — Speaker Philip Gunn at a media briefing in the House chamber called Supreme Court's decision to end a person's right to obtain an abortion one of the most historic days in recent memory and thanked conservative politicians who championed the 2018 Mississippi law that led to the Court's decision.
"I want to thank the members of the (Mississippi) House of Representatives who had the courage and the vision and the foresight to step up and cast a vote in favor of this law," Gunn, R-Clinton, said. "This is why we're meeting in the House chamber today. This is where this started."
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Now that the nation's highest court has allowed states to set their own abortion policies, a trigger law will soon go into effect in the Magnolia State that outlaws nearly all cases of abortion.
The 2007 trigger law only allows physicians to conduct abortions when a mother's life is at stake or when the pregnancy resulted from a rape that has been reported to law enforcement. The law does not allow for an exception for incest.
Statistics compiled by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, show that around two out of three instances of sexual assault go unreported to law enforcement.
A majority of sexual assault survivors choose not to report the incidents to protect the household or victim from further crimes by the offender or to stop the incident or prevent recurring again, according to statistics from the Department of Justice.
Still Gunn said he would not advocate for tweaking the trigger law to include more exceptions and didn't know if there would be much of an appetite among the House's conservative supermajority to change the law either.
When asked if he thought a survivor of incest should be forced to carry a child to full term, the speaker said yes.
"My personal belief is that life begins at conception," Gunn said.
Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation, has a lack of prenatal health care, has the highest infant mortality rate in the nation and one of the highest maternal death rates.
The state's Child Protective Service Department is also still dealing with a long-running lawsuit to address its foster care system.
Health leaders have said one way to improve health outcomes for children and pregnant people is to expand Medicaid access to the working poor and to enhance Medicaid services for mothers after they give birth. Despite Senate support for the latter, Gunn has opposed both of these efforts and has questioned if they would improve health outcomes.
Instead, the leader of the House is proposing to create a commission to recommend "Next Steps for Life" policies that the House could pass during its next legislative session. The speaker said the commission would be made up of physicians, pregnancy resource officials and lawmakers.
When asked if the commission would consider policies such as postpartum Medicaid expansion, the speaker said he would leave it up for them to decide.
Some of Gunn's suggestions for policies the commission would look at are more child protection and foster care options, more affordable adoption practices and enforcing child support collection laws.
