On Sunday evening, pro-life leaders and advocates came together in Jackson, Mississippi for a nationwide prayer event hosted by the Family Research Council (FRC). The event called "Pray Together for Life" was organized to take place on the final Sunday before the Supreme Court hears opening arguments in the state's pro-life law.
FRC president Tony Perkins was joined by Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser, Alliance Defending Freedom president Mike Farris, Mississippi Republican Governor Tate Reeves, and evangelist Alveda King at the New Horizon Church in Jackson.
"For decades, pro-life Americans have prayed and worked to see Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, overturned," a press release statement said of the event, as reported by Breitbart. "This decision could be the case that sends Roe to the dustbin of history."
The Mississippi abortion case, which was described by the Associated Press as an "all-or-nothing abortion fight," features a challenge to Mississippi's Gestational Age Act, a measure that would limit abortion following 15 weeks of pregnancy and poses one of the biggest challenges in decades to the right to abortion made legal by the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade back in 1973.
In a recent statement from Dannenfelser after Susan B. Anthony List's launch of a multi-million dollar pro-life ad campaign, she said, "Science continually affirms the humanity of unborn children." The statement underscored how "unborn babies feel paid" and how "Americans overwhelmingly reject such extreme policies, yet their elected lawmakers are shackled to Supreme Court precedents that, in effect, allow unlimited abortion up until birth - these are needlessly divisive and decades out of step with medicine and technology."
According to CBN News, Perkins called upon the American faithful to pray for "the justices, the lawyers, and especially the unborn and their mothers whom this decision will impact," when the country is at a "defining moment" this week as it "considers the future of abortion" in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the biggest abortion provider in the U.S., Planned Parenthood, expressed concern over the Supreme Court's hearing on the Mississippi abortion case, saying that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, more states will ban abortion, denying girls and women access to abortion. The organization claims that unresticted abortion access supports equality across America, despite the fact that abortion is a "major cause of death"a nd one that "which disproportionately affects a racial minority," as per scientific studies.
Gov. Reeves said during NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that he beleived "in a simple reading of the United States Constitution, that when Roe was decided in 1973 there is no fundamental right in our United States Constitution to an abortion," the Miami Herald reported.
He added that Mississippi is not alone in developing a law that bans abortion after 15 weeks, as similar laws are present in "39 countries, 39 out of 42 in Europe, [which] have more restrictive abortion laws than what I believe to be one of the most conservative states in the United States."
