Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch was among the honorees of Live Action’s Life Gala in Dana Point, California, on Sept. 17, 2022. / Screenshot of ETWN YouTube video
Denver, Colo., Jan 20, 2023 / 10:10 am (CNA).
This year’s National March for Life is the first since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 pro-abortion precedent Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022.
Among its scheduled speakers is Lynn Fitch, attorney general for the state of Mississippi, who helped defend Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban before a court primed to revisit precedent in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The court sided with Fitch and other critics, overturning Roe in a 5-3 decision.
1. For Fitch, the Dobbs era is a new chapter for America.
“This year’s March is unlike any other,” Fitch told CNA on Thursday. “We are saying goodbye to one chapter of American history and starting a new one. In this new Dobbs era, the task now falls to us to ensure our laws reflect the compassion we have always felt for woman and child.”
“As we march into this new chapter, we do so with the same hope and resolve to ensure our laws empower women and their families and respect the dignity of all life,” Fitch said.
Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban passed in 2018, before Fitch had announced her campaign for attorney general. Challenges to the ban proceeded through the federal courts, and in 2019 an appeals court struck down the law. When she won the election in November 2019, it was left to her, the first woman to serve as Mississippi attorney general, to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the law.
2. Fitch grew up on a farm.
Fitch is Mississippi’s first Republican attorney general since 1878 and the first woman to serve in the role.
The 61-year-old is a native of Holly Springs, Mississippi, near the Tennessee border. There, her father inherited land on the former Galena Plantation and worked to restore the family farm, BBC News reported. Fitch Farms became a famous hunting destination for figures including the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, another skeptic of the Supreme Court’s Roe precedent.
As a young woman, Fitch’s interests included riding horses and hunting quail on the farm. Her former campaign manager Hayes Dent told BBC News she was the “prototypical popular girl… leader, cheerleader, athletic, the whole nine yards.”
She attended the University of Mississippi, where she joined a sorority and earned an undergraduate degree and a law degree. After graduation, she worked for the state attorney general’s office before entering private practice. Her hard work, and some family connections, aided her ascent in Mississippi politics.
Before she took office as attorney general, she served as Mississippi state treasurer from 2012 to 2020. She previously served in the administration of Gov. Haley Barbour and as a legal counsel to the Mississippi House of Representatives Ways and Means and Local and Private Legislation Committees.
She was a member of the 2016 Republican National Convention platform committee and worked for pro-life principles there, World Magazine reported in November 2021.
Her official biography reports her support for charities for first responders and juvenile diabetes. She also supports Goodwill Industries and the American Red Cross. Fitch is co-chair of the National Association of Attorneys General Human Trafficking Committee.
According to her 2020 campaign website, she and her family are “active members” of Madison United Methodist Church in the city of Madison, Mississippi.
3. Her campaign theme was “Empower Women, Promote Life.”
After her divorce, Fitch raised two daughters and a son as a single mother. Her personal success, and the success of many mothers, helped inspire her campaign to defend Mississippi’s abortion ban and overturn Roe. For this campaign, she used the motto “Empower Women, Promote Life.”
One of her arguments against Roe v. Wade is that women’s situations have much improved since the 1970s.
In a Sept. 19, 2021, opinion essay for the Dallas Morning News, Fitch invoked the “Olympic Supermoms,” peak athletes who are also mothers.
“As a single, working mother, I raised three children and went from launching the Mississippi Bar’s first Women in the Profession Committee to becoming our first female attorney general. I know from experience that there is nothing easy about this, which is why I commend those Olympic Supermoms for proudly displaying their motherhood while the spotlight is on their professional accomplishments.”
“Abortion policy has been tethered to 1973, but women, men, and the workplace have all changed, facilitating our ability to have both a full family life and successful career,” she said.
“Over the past five decades, revolutions in cultural norms and public policy have opened opportunities for women who were previously told you could be a mother or a career woman, but not both,” Fitch continued. She noted that mothers of young children had doubled their workforce participation from 1975 to 2016.
“Technology and the advent of the gig economy have only increased options for freelancing, part-time work, and independent contracting for women to have more choices in life,” the attorney general said.
4. Fitch authored Mississippi’s Supreme Court brief for the Dobbs case.
Fitch made her case in favor of the Mississippi law and against Roe in a written submission to the court, leaving oral arguments to Mississippi solicitor general Scott Stewart.
She emphasized the need to strike down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. They “shackle states to a view of the facts that is decades out of date,” she wrote.
“It is time for the Court to set this right and return this political debate to the political branches of government,” she said. “State legislatures, and the people they represent, have lacked clarity in passing laws to protect legitimate public interests, and artificial guideposts have stunted important public debate on how we, as a society, care for the dignity of women and their children.”
She repeated her case that women’s situations, and the ability to care for families, have much improved.
“A lot has changed in five decades. In 1973, there was little support for women who wanted a full family life and a successful career. Maternity leave was rare. Paternity leave was unheard of. The gold standard for professional success was a 9-to-5 with a corner office. The flexibility of the gig economy was a fairy tale,” she said. “In these last 50 years, women have carved their own way to achieving a better balance for success in their professional and personal lives.”
5. Fitch is continuing her legal efforts against pro-abortion federal policy.
After Dobbs, Fitch has continued legal efforts to challenge the spread of abortion.
On Jan. 18 of this year, she joined a brief supporting a Texas nurse’s lawsuit in a challenge to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA is implementing the Biden administration’s plan to allow abortion at its hospitals, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported.
“In direct contravention of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs, President Biden has taken abortion policy away from state legislators, Congress, and, most importantly, the people and given it to political appointees in his own administration,” Fitch said in a statement. “The Dobbs decision was about the rule of law. This VA rule is precisely the opposite.”
Seventeen other states’ attorneys general have joined the brief.
6. Fitch supports a “safety net” for women and babies.
After the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, a different Mississippi ban on abortion took effect, barring the procedure except in cases of rape or when the mother’s life is in danger.
In response to the new political and cultural landscape created by Dobbs, Fitch insisted on the need for a strong safety net.
“Now, we must all work together to strengthen the safety net that women need not only for healthy pregnancies but also as they build families where both they and their children thrive,” she said in July 2022. “We need our laws to reflect our compassion for these women and their children.”
She called for action to help address the affordability and accessibility of child care, child support enforcement, and requirements for fathers to be equally responsible for their children, workplace policies like maternity and paternity leave, streamlining adoption, and improving foster care.
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Shaw speaks of political turbulence over abortion politics in the short term.
He does not mention the possibility of this turbulence and other rogue agendas submitting “resolutions” into the USCCB component of the short-term (2021-2023) Synod on Synodality, and, therefore, into the “endless journey” of synodality…
But, with such a risk, is synodality actually looking forward—wisely!—a full century, hoping for the damage-control of at least planting seeds of openness and even faith, hither and thither? Which, in time, might then “work from within” (Pope St. John XXIII), decades and decades hence?
Perhaps an astute long-term strategy, given the somber demographic forecasts for the Church in our non-Christian and largely post-Christian world. Something like persecuted Japanese Catholics persevering for two centuries without priests? Something like sociologist Max Weber, who remarked of the coming 20th century bureaucracies: “Not summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness ”?
But, part of “listening together” to the Spirit is to first recall what has already been heard—-as from the definitive Word made flesh, and as in the aggiornamento (steadfast “todaying,” not flaccid “updating”) already supplied, however imperfectly, in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
Attention first to essentials, today: the sacramental life, the family, and morality. Yes?
But, where minimal Eucharistic coherence is proposed today, Sacrosanctum Concilium is headed for extermination. Instead of Familiaris Consortio, Amoris Laetitia inserts the ambiguous Chapter 8 and wedge-footnote 351 regarding “irregular” marriage situations. Instead of Verititas Splendor which reaffirms and clarifies moral absolutes, silence regarding the dubia. Instead of the universal Church, the graffiti and effrontery of Germania’s stencil “synodal way”…
All of this, from the front office the sound of an uncertain trumpet! The “continental” Synod on Synodality is at risk, today, of giving an entirely new meaning to Continental Drift.
Change the hearts and minds – change the culture. Good idea. Where might we start? How about within our Church. This might be more difficult than one might think. We might start with the bishops, a large percentage of whom belong to the party that officially is in favor of killing the unborn anytime, any place, for any reason, paid for by the government. Three fourths of. my state’s bishops belong to the party of death – democrat. I mention “democrat” because the author failed to mention which party favors abortion (just as many bishops’ statements fail to do).
Also, somewhere around 50% of catholic voters voted for the very pro-abortion candidate for president. And, do not think those are the non practicing catholics. I can say from personal experience that many Sunday Mass goers seem to give a higher priority to their democrat party registration than to their faith.
To solve a problem, you need to correctly identify the problem. We have an internal problem in the Church regarding abortion. We need to tackle that before addressing the wider world.
“… because the author failed to mention which party favors abortion…”
If it’s not obvious to people, we have even deeper problems than changing minds.
The presence of a beating heart means one UNDENIABLE thing – that there is a living human being inside the woman. The pro-death crowd knows that and that is why they are so desperate to stop the Texas law by any and all means necessary. If it’s growing it’s alive, and if there is a heart beating, that person is ALIVE, and what is the word used to describe the stopping of a beating heart in instances like this?
Murder
Regarding Mr. Olson’s comment about it being obvious which party is in favor of abortion. Yes, it is obvious. But is there a reason why bishops, in particular, do not mention it? Don’t want to anger those in government who funnel millions of dollars to the bishops? When the House votes tomorrow on the abortion bill, let us see the wording of the bishops in response.
Then again, maybe not obvious. I read the other day a survey that said 50% of catholics didn’t know who Cardinal McCarrick was. There are a large number of catholics who do not keep up with what is going on.
“Both sides in the abortion wars like to cite polls showing that the weight of public opinion favors them.” The salient point on this is Cardinal Ratzinger’s, “Truth is not determined by a majority vote.” Let’s pray that SCOTUS seeks truth rather than a majority opinion from the electorate.
I agree with Crusader that some things are not as obvious as we might think they are. I don’t doubt that many Catholics haven’t the foggiest notion of who McCarrick is. When Nancy Pelosi says that God gave us free will, I think many, if not most, Catholics are nodding their heads, without the “yes but . . ” that needs to follow that bit of catechesis.
Just as a follow up to yesterday’s comments: I just watched the end of the House vote on the extreme abortion bill. Pelosi, with a huge smile, just announced the bills approval – 218 Democrat votes in favor vs 210 Republican votes opposed.
https://cdn.gospelherald.com/data/images/full/21513/the-drama-of-life-before-birth.jpg
I don’t know if the link above will appear here as an image or a link. If it appears as a link please click on it. A picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
It is an April 1965 LIFE magazine cover with a photograph of an absolutely beautiful, living unborn child at 18 weeks after conception.
Jesus once looked like that. Such children are the least of Christ’s brethren, the strangers the world refuses to make welcome. “I was a stranger and you did not welcome me …” (Mt 25:43)
Please note that Christ described the last judgement (see Mt 25:31-46) in terms of eternal reward or punishment, not for what we did, but for what we failed to do. Those to whom he says “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for … I was a stranger and you did not welcome me …” are damned for sins of omission.
Christ died for you two-thousand years before you arrived in this world in your mother’s womb. He didn’t stop loving you for nine months and then resume loving you after you were born.
Every abortion kills a child precious to God, one for whom He has already suffered an agonizing and humiliating death. The murder of each of those children matters to God. Those murders should matter to God’s people, too.
Why? Again “I was a stranger and you did not welcome me.” Do we love God or not? Christ couldn’t have made it more clear: What we fail to do for the least of His brethren we fail to do for Him.
The complacency of God’s people is the reason this holocaust continues. If we don’t use the political freedom we still possess to end it, that freedom will be taken away from us.
That we, as a “civilized” society are even having this discussion is deeply disturbing. Killing our own children. God will not deal well with us.
A further update – Just read the USCCB pro life committee chairman’s reaction to the terrible vote on the House abortion bill. No mention that it was 218 democrats in favor and 210 republicans opposed. From the bishop’s statement one could easily come away thinking it was a bipartisan vote.
There are people who should be allowed to publish and those who shouldn’t. I see no reason why any person who vigorously maintains that 2+2=5 should be allowed to publish a treatise on mathematics.
In a similar manner, there are those who seem to believe that the Supreme Court is an infallible prophetic body that has a direct connection to God. If the Supreme Court said that the sky was green, then these people would nod their heads in agreement.
The Supreme Court has no enforcement authority and is – like all human institutions – fallible. I am not aware of this kind of fact being obvious at any point in history after President Andrew Jackson’s famous “rebellion” against a just decision.
What should be happening is that prosecutors should be ignoring what any legislators and courts say, and prosecuting abortionists who commit abortion for murder. Police, of course, are obliged to investigate crimes.
One Democrat voted against the bill, Henry Cuellar (think I have that name right). May his tribe increase. I think it may have been Charles Camosy who said the pro-life cause needs Democrats to come on board.