A group of anti-abortion doctors is asking the state Supreme Court to reverse its earlier ruling stating that the right to an abortion is guaranteed by the Mississippi Constitution.
The original 1998 Supreme Court ruling that provides the right to an abortion for Mississippians conflicts with state law that bans most abortions in Mississippi.
The appeal to the Supreme Court comes after an earlier ruling by Hinds County Chancellor Crystal Wise Martin, who found the group of conservative physicians did not have standing to bring the lawsuit.
Mississippi members of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists argued that they could be punished for not helping a patient find access to an abortion since the earlier state Supreme Court ruling said Mississippians had a right to abortion under the state Constitution. But the Hinds County chancellor said they did not have standing because they could not prove any harm to them because of their anti abortion stance.
Attorney Aaron Rice, representing the doctors, said after the October ruling by Wise Martin that he intended to ask the state Supreme Court to rule on the case.
It was a Mississippi case that led to the controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed since the early 1970s a national right to an abortion.
Mississippi had laws in place to ban most abortions once Roe v. Wade was overturned, But there also was the 1998 state Supreme Court ruling that provided the right to an abortion.
Despite that ruling, there are currently no abortion clinics in Mississippi. But in the lawsuit, the conservative physicians group pointed out the ambiguity of the issue since in normal legal proceedings a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of an issue would trump state law.
But in her ruling, Wise Martin pointed out that the state Supreme Court in multiple recent high-profile rulings has limited standing or who has the ability to file a lawsuit. Wise Martin said testimony on the issue revealed that physicians had not been punished in Mississippi for refusing to perform abortions.
Both the state and a pro abortion rights group argued that the physicians did not have standing to pursue the lawsuit. The state also contends that existing law makes it clear that most abortions are banned in Mississippi.
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