How Mississippi came to the forefront of debate on the future of birth control

When concerns were raised that the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade might prompt bans on contraception, Mississippi Sen. Joey Fillingane (R-Sumrall) dismissed them as overblown, and falsely claimed that a proposed state law to enshrine the right to birth control would legalize “morning-after abortions.”

Fillingane, who had authored the state’s “trigger” law banning nearly all abortions, was reacting to news of the proposed Right to Contraception Act, to protect Mississippians’ access to birth control pills, condoms, IUDs and other forms of contraception.

His reference to “morning-after abortions” was a mischaracterization of what are known as morning-after contraception pills, two of which are FDA approved: Plan B and Ella. The medications prevent or reduce ovulation and can prevent pregnancies from happening if taken soon after sex, though they do not terminate a pregnancy, as noted by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Fillingane said concerns about a potential ban on contraception was “a very cynical ploy on behalf of very woke Democrats.” Yet his comments illustrate a conservative approach that incorrectly equates certain forms of contraception with abortion, as evidenced by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s suggestion that next on the agenda after overturning Roe v. Wade should be revisiting Griswold v. Connecticut, which ensured the right to contraception. Vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has likewise proposed invoking a 19^th century law used to prohibit mailing contraceptives, which he suggested could be used to limit distribution of abortion-inducing medications.

In a history of birth control published more than a decade ago, journalist Jill Lepore foreshadowed a contentious debate in which birth control and abortion would be commingled, with Mississippi playing a prominent role in the debate.

In 2011, a “personhood amendment” was introduced as a Mississippi constitutional ballot initiative to define human life as beginning at fertilization. Though the initiative failed, it marked a new starting point for contemporary debate over reproductive rights. The issue was no longer only about aborting a fetus. Even morning-after contraception could be considered an assault on a fertilized embryo before it was implanted and constituted a pregnancy, a position supported by many evangelical and pro-life groups. Then-Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, who was running for governor at the time, warned that a defeat of the personhood amendment would mean “Satan wins.”

As Lepore wrote, “Personhood amendments could be interpreted to make several forms of birth control illegal, challenging not only Roe v. Wade but also Griswold v. Connecticut, which placed contraception under the protection of a constitutional right to privacy.”

During the 2023-2024 legislative session, state Rep. Zakiya Summers (D-Jackson) authored House Bill 1154, one of several similar measures to guarantee Mississippians’ right to contraception, all of which failed. Summers was assisted by a national group, Americans For Contraception Education Fund, which is reportedly working in Mississippi and at least five other states to pass such legislation. Fillingane criticized the involvement of the outside interest group, though the authors of the personhood amendment had likewise reportedly collaborated with an out-of-state organization, Colorado-based Personhood USA.

Mississippi assumed greater national prominence in the wider abortion debate with the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which held that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. The case centered on the constitutionality of a 2018 state law that banned most abortion operations after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Jackson Women’s Health, Mississippi's only abortion clinic at the time, had sued state health officer Thomas Dobbs and the Mississippi State Department of Health, arguing that a woman’s right to abortion was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The following year, the District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi issued an injunction against a newly passed state abortion law, known as the “heartbeat bill,” which prohibited abortions after a fetus’s heartbeat could be detected, which is usually from six to 12 weeks into pregnancy.

After the Dobbs case made its way to the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade was overturned, several states introduced or reintroduced abortion restrictions. Abortion was made illegal in Mississippi in 2022 after state Attorney General Lynn Fitch certified that the high court’s ruling had triggered the 2007 law effectively banning all abortions in the state, “except in the case where necessary for the preservation of the mother's life or where the pregnancy was caused by rape.”

Not everyone immediately recognized the potential implications for contraception, though some, including Lepore, had issued earlier warnings.

Opponents of both abortion and birth control had linked the two as far back as the 1910s (as was detailed in the immediately preceding Mississippi Independent article). Today, when most Americans view birth control as a routine, accepted practice, attempting to equate it with abortion might seem counterintuitive, even outlandish. Yet the overturning of the long-recognized right to abortion, together with efforts to conflate abortion with certain types of contraception, illustrate that nothing is off the table.

Mississippi’s bill to guarantee the right to contraception mirrored a U.S. Senate bill filed in June 2024 that was likewise defeated. The author of the Senate measure, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), said, “This vote poses one simple question: Do you believe Americans’ access to birth control should be protected? Yes or no.”

Mississippi’s two U.S. senators, Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, voted against the bill. Wicker afterward downplayed concerns about contraception.

“There’s no real opposition to contraception anywhere in the United States Senate or around the country, so I think it’s pretty much a non-issue,” Wicker said. He called the bill a “show vote” by Democrats to deflect from other issues.

Hyde-Smith, chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, responded similarly, proclaiming on her website that she was “bashing” the legislation, which she described as “a deceptive ploy that would, among other things, infringe on religious freedoms and parental rights.” She said Democrats’ stated concerns amounted to “fearmongering” and was part of their “radical agenda.” For a student of history, her use of the latter phrase harkened back to conservative positioning during the 1910s.

The bill would have codified Americans’ right to obtain contraception and the right of medical providers to dispense it, despite any religious or parental objections. Politico reported that the Senate vote came “on the heels of former President Donald Trump telling a local television station that he’s ‘looking at’ restrictions on contraception,” though Trump later walked back that comment.

The Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 report urges Trump to expand religious and moral objections to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate and to remove emergency contraception from the mandate as a “potential abortifacient,” according to Politico. Emergency contraception, which includes the morning-after pill as well as IUDs, reduces the risk of pregnancy following unprotected sexual intercourse or when other contraceptive measures have not worked properly or have not been used correctly. It is intended to be used occasionally and, again, is not the same as medical abortion.  

Many elected officials have sought to distance themselves from the melding of abortion and contraception, and to discount public concerns about the continued availability of birth control, even as others have set wheels in motion to restrict practices they claim are inseparable. As one legal scholar told Time magazine, “There’s long been a pretty large and growing part of the anti-abortion movement that believes that nonmarital non-procreative sex is a problem in and of itself… And the strategies are mostly the strategies you saw in the fight against Roe – the same kind of incremental strategy. The only difference is labeling contraception abortion – not even having it be a separate fight, just recategorizing contraception as abortifacients.”

As has been widely reported, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declined to say whether he would support a contraception ban and has said he believes life begins at conception. In response, then-speaker of the Mississippi House Philip Gunn issued a statement in 2022 saying lawmakers would not move legislation banning contraceptives. 

“Gov. Reeves’ recent interviews caused confusion on the future of contraceptives in MS after a ruling on Dobbs,” Gunn posted on Twitter (now X). Using the same talking-point language that Hyde-Smith invoked, he added, “The scaremongering on the left intended to make pro-life states look extreme won’t work. Rest assured, @MSHouseofRep wouldn’t move legislation banning contraceptives.”

Fillingane has said he supports “all the contraceptive options, short of an abortion.” The latter phrase is key, given efforts to define many forms of contraception as abortifacients.

Mississippi’s personhood amendment would have banned many forms of contraception as well as in vitro fertilization. Groups in several other states, including Colorado, Georgia, North Dakota and Oklahoma, and national organizations such as the Personhood Alliance and Personhood USA, have unsuccessfully pushed such amendments. In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were “extrauterine children” subject to the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. This legal site notes that as of January 2024, 39 states have fetal homicide statutes, 29 of which contain language defining a fetal person as beginning at conception.

As Lepore’s previous reporting illustrates, many of these efforts predate the overturn of Roe v. Wade. As far back as 2010, the author of a Mississippi College Law Review article noted:  “Anti-contraception activists are making incremental progress in passing laws that impede access to birth control.”

Lepore summed up a salient issue regarding the doctrine of embryonic personhood: “If a fertilized egg has constitutional rights, women cannot have equal rights with men.”

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Image: U.S. Supreme Court, via Ken Lund/Flickr

Alan Huffman is a freelance writer, author and political researcher based in Bolton, Mississippi. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, ProPublica, the Washington Post and numerous other publications.