Mississippi’s Republican political leaders have continuously voiced unwavering support for former President Donald Trump’s policies and actions.
But on the hot button issue of abortion, there appears to be some separation between the position of the state’s political leadership and the policy of the former president who is vying to win a second term.
Trump now supports, his campaign has said, every state voting on the issue of abortion.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign told NBC News earlier this month: “As president Trump said, he wants ‘everybody to vote’ on the issue, reiterating his long-held position of supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion.”
Mississippi’s political leaders, however, have gone to extraordinary measures to ensure that their citizens are not allowed to vote on the issue.
For two consecutive legislative sessions, the state’s political leadership has proposed legislation that would prohibit Mississippians from being able to vote on abortion.
In both the 2023 and 2024 sessions, lawmakers attempted to pass a proposal to restore the ballot initiative process, in which voters can bypass the Legislature and gather enough signatures to place issues on the ballot for the electorate to approve or reject. There was a need to restore the initiative process because the state Supreme Court struck it down on a technicality in 2021.
At the time, the state’s political leadership vowed to fix the technicality and restore the process of allowing citizens to place issues on the ballot.
But as they worked to restore the process the past two sessions, political leaders opted to add a provision to proposals that would prevent the initiative from being used to garner a vote on abortion. Those efforts to restore the process have been blocked at least in part because of opposition to placing the ban on a vote on abortion in the legislation.
But, in a sort of Catch-22, the fact that the initiative has not been restored means there is no mechanism for the citizens to put abortion on the ballot.
Political leaders do not want abortion on the ballot, at least in part because it would be embarrassing for them if voters rejected the state’s strict abortion ban. After all, Mississippi brought the lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which previously provided a national right to an abortion.
It is important to remember that the only time Mississippians voted on an abortion-related issue was in 2011. The state’s electorate that year overwhelmingly voted against the personhood initiative, which would have put into law that life begins at fertilization.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, seven states have voted on abortion — and all seven, including Republican states like Kentucky and Kansas, have voted in favor of abortion rights.
At least nine more states will vote on abortion this November. Trump is fearful that people coming out to vote in favor of abortion rights in those states will vote against him because he has bragged about being responsible for the overturning of Roe v. Wade thanks to the three conservatives he appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court during his first term.
The states that will be voting on abortion this November include the key swing states of Florida, Arizona and Nevada. It would be difficult to see a path to reelection for Trump if he loses Florida. So, not surprisingly, the man who brags on overturning a national right to abortion will not say how he plans to vote on the abortion issue in his adopted home state of Florida.
In neighboring Arkansas, where former Trump spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders is governor, the Republican secretary of state blocked an initiative that would provide a right to an abortion for up to 18 weeks from making the ballot. The initiative was struck down even though sponsors gathered the required number of signatures. Arkansas, like Mississippi, now has a ban on most all abortions.
It’s also important to remember that Trump’s position on abortion has evolved dramatically through the years.
In 1996, he proclaimed that he supported abortion rights.
When he ran for president in 2016, he campaigned on overturning Roe v. Wade and voiced support for placing national restrictions on abortion. He even briefly endorsed criminal penalties on women who had abortions, though he backtracked on that position soon after learning how unpopular it was.
Trump recently seemed to leave open the possibility of his administration banning the so-called abortion pill, though he later backtracked and his campaign said he misunderstood the question.
Now, facing a tough campaign where abortion is a major issue, his latest position is that he wants “everybody to vote” on it.
Whether Mississippi officials, who have gone whole hog for Trump for years, will accept that position remains to be seen.
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