Pro-Life Measure Makes Mississippi Ballot

At this posting, there are 123 comments on this article. Since the implementation of Mississippi's initiative process in 1993, only two initiatives have previously qualified for the ballot. Both-- in 1995 and 1999-- pertained to term limits, and both were defeated. ~~ SR

******************************

by Elizabeth Crisp
ClarionLedger.com

Abortion foes have secured enough signatures on a petition to get an initiative on the 2011 ballot to define life as beginning at the point of conception.

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann announced today that petitioners gathered 106,325 signatures— well over the 89,285 needed to get the initiative on the general election ballot.

Voters will decide whether a “person” should be defined as any life “from the point of fertilization, cloning or equivalent thereof.”

“We are trying to define — in the law — where life begins,” said Les Riley, a Pontotoc resident who spearheaded the petition efforts.[1] “A person is a person, no matter how small.”

The personhood petition is the second voter-led effort that has secured enough signatures to appear on the November 2011 ballot. The other seeks to require voters to show identification at the polls in Mississippi.

******************************

[1] Riley was the Constitution Party's 2007 nominee for state commissioner of agriculture.