Mississippi Code 1972 (2023) › Title 41 - PUBLIC HEALTH (§§ 41-1-1 — 41-149-NEW-003) › Chapter 41 - SURGICAL OR MEDICAL PROCEDURES; CONSENTS (§§ 41-41-1 — 41-41-NEW-008) › LIFE EQUALITY ACT OF 2020 (§§ 41-41-401 — 41-41-NEW-008) › Section 41-41-403 - Legislative findings and purpose

(1)
The Legislature finds:
(a)
The United States Supreme Court has been "zealous in vindicating the rights of people even potentially subjected to race, sex, and disability discrimination."
Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, 139 S.Ct. 1780, 1792 (2019)
(Thomas J., concurring) (citing
Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado
, 580 U.S. ___, ___ (2017) (slip op., at 15) (condemning "discrimination on the basis of race" as "'odious in all aspects'");
United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 532 (1996)
(denouncing any "law or official policy [that] denies to women, simply because they are women...equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities");
Tennessee v. Lane, 541 U.S. 509, 522 (2004)
(condemning "irrational disability discrimination")).
(b)
The inherent right against discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or genetic abnormality is protected in federal and state laws. For example, the 1964 Civil Rights Act (
42 U.S.C. 2000e
et seq.) and the laws of every state protect against discrimination on the basis of race or sex. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (
29 U.S.C. 701
), the Americans With Disabilities Amendments Act of 2010 (
42 U.S.C. 12101
, et seq.), and numerous state laws prohibit discrimination against individuals on the basis of a real or perceived physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.
(c)
Notwithstanding these protections, unborn human beings are often discriminated against and deprived of life.
(d)
As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has noted, "Each of the immutable characteristics protected by this law can be known relatively early in a pregnancy, and this law prevents them from becoming the sole criterion for deciding whether the child will live or die."
Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, 139 S.Ct. 1780, 1783 (2019)
(Thomas, J., concurring).
(e)
"Abortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation."
Id
. at 1787.
(f)
The State of Mississippi maintains a "compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics."
Id
.
(g)
Sex-selection abortions are used to prevent the birth of a human being of the undesired sex. Its victims are overwhelming female.
(h)
Despite equality under the law being guaranteed to all women in the United States and most of the developed world, sex-selection abortions continue to occur in the United States.
(i)
Abortions predicated on the presence or presumed presence of genetic abnormalities continue to occur despite the increasingly favorable post-natal outcomes for human beings perceived as handicapped or disabled. Pharmaceutical treatments, gene therapies, and prosthetic advances have given formerly handicapped and disabled human beings much greater opportunities for survival and success than ever before. Importantly, surgical intervention now includes the availability of intrauterine surgery.
(2)
Therefore, it is the intent of the Mississippi Legislature, through Sections
41-41-401
through
41-41-419
and any regulations and policies promulgated hereunder, to prohibit the practice of nontherapeutic or elective abortion for the purpose of terminating the life of an unborn human being because of that human being's race, sex, or the presence or presumed presence of a genetic abnormality.
Added by Laws, 2020, ch. 434, HB 1295,§ 2, eff. 7/1/2020.