Pro-Life. There is so much implied in that word. For example, if you are not pro-life does that make you anti-life? If you’re anti-life, are you a horrible person? These are questions many people have to deal with every day, especially people like me who live in states like Mississippi. There are many things that can be said about Mississippi and its track record with reproductive health (like being number one in teen pregnancy for example) but I truly believe Initiative #26 takes the cake.

"Initiative #26 would amend the Mississippi Constitution to define the word 'person' or 'persons', as those terms are used in Article III of the state constitution, to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof."

Who could imagine that one sentence could make so much difference? This amendment ensures that any egg that is fertilized must be carried to term. This means birth control, like the pill, the morning after pill, and IUD’s would be illegal. This means an abortion cannot take place even if the mother was raped, or if it was incest, or if they are in danger of dying if the pregnancy is carried to term. This means in vitro fertilization would no longer be available.

This petition got more signatures than it needed to be considered by the local government. More.

Instead of spending money on programs to help prevent unwanted pregnancies (like the President’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative) Mississippi is seriously considering taking away a huge chunk of the alternatives for those who are sexually active and don’t want to get pregnant. Is it to force responsibility on the public? To ensure that marriage is the only place where sexual relations are occurring? Wasn’t that the point of abstinence only initiatives in school? Yet we are still number one in teen pregnancy. Why can’t we seem to understand that saying “Just Say No” does not work? Why do we think saying “Just Say No or Else” will work any better? If they ignored you the first time, chances are your "or else" doesn’t carry much weight. If we want to really increase our pregnancy rates, we found the perfect way.

But maybe I really am missing something here. I am the first to admit that I am not an expert on this issue. Yet, to me, literally stripping sexually active people of every choice available to them in order to avoid pregnancy, seems unnecessary and more than a little reckless. To me there are a hundred of ways it could backfire and only one way it could work, one very shaky, unrealistic way. But maybe the fact that I don’t see pro-choice as anti-life is why I can’t grasp why this amendment seems like a good idea to so many Mississippians. Furthermore, maybe other Mississippians don’t know what exactly is entailed in this bill. All I know is that many who do know what the bill entails, medical professionals who are fully aware of its consequences, feel the government is going too far. In addition, if this law is carried out, pro-choice will not only include those against abortion, but those who approve of birth control, in vitro fertilization, etc. The government is literally building up the pro-choice platform in Mississippi by giving them more to stand on. If the people are stripped of all of their alternatives, then health care as we know it will be changed completely and pro-life will quickly come to mean not only anti-abortion, but anti-choice.