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.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Voters will choose between Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens and state Sen. Jenifer Branning in a runoff election on Nov. 26, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Mississippi Today’s Adam Ganucheau, Bobby Harrison, and Taylor Vance break down the race and discuss why the election is so important for the future of the court and policy in Mississippi.

READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Nov. 18, 1946

Future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was nearly lynched in Columbia, Tennessee, just 30 miles from where the Ku Klux Klan was born. 

He and his fellow NAACP lawyers had come here to defend Black men accused of racial violence. In a trial, Marshall and other NAACP lawyers won acquittals for nearly two dozen Black men. 

After the verdicts were read, Marshall and his colleagues promptly left town. After crossing a river, they came upon a car in the middle of the road. Then they heard a siren. Three police cars emptied, and eight men surrounded the lawyers. An officer told Marshall he was being arrested for drunken driving, even though he hadn’t been drinking. Officers forced Marshall into the back seat of a car and told the other men to leave. 

“Marshall knew that nothing good ever happened when police cars drove black men down unpaved roads,” author Gilbert King wrote in “Devil in the Grove.” “He knew that the bodies of blacks — the victims of lynchings and random murders — had been discovered along these riverbanks for decades. And it was at the bottom of Duck River that, during the trial, the NAACP lawyers had been told their bodies would end up.” 

When the car stopped next to the river, Marshall could see a crowd of white men gathered under a tree. Then he spotted headlights behind them. It was a fellow NAACP lawyer, Zephaniah Alexander Looby, who had trailed them to make sure nothing happened. Reporter Harry Raymond concluded that a lynching had been planned, and “Thurgood Marshall was the intended victim.” Marshall never forgot the harrowing night and redoubled his efforts to bring justice in cases where Black defendants were falsely accused.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.