Ty Pinkins, the Mississippi Democrat challenging U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker for his U.S. Senate seat, is embracing reproductive rights in his campaign against the Republican incumbent.
While the Democrat proudly calls himself “pro-choice,” Wicker says he believes abortion is wrong because life begins at conception.
“Sen. Wicker has been fighting a personal battle against women since he got into office,” Pinkins told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 26. The Democratic nominee is one of just a few statewide candidates from his party in recent years who has been willing to support abortion access; the two most recent Democratic candidates for governor, Jim Hood in 2019 and Brandon Presley in 2023, both said they were “pro-life” and opposed abortion rights.
Wicker did not respond to any of the Mississippi Free Press’ requests to interview him for this story.
Pinkins, Wicker Clash on Abortion Access
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24, 2022, ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, which had prohibited states from enacting broad abortion bans. After the fall of Roe, Mississippi quickly brought an abortion ban into effect that closed the state’s only abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, better known as the “Pink House.”
Former president Donald Trump accepts credit for the reversal of Roe v. Wade because he appointed conservative Supreme Court justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the bench during his term in the White House, all three of whom voted to end the protections provided by Roe vs. Wade. If Trump wins the presidency in 2024, he could have the opportunity to appoint another conservative justice to the court.
While representing Mississippi in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Roger Wicker voted to confirm Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch to the nation’s highest court. Wicker has supported Trump’s abortion policies and has fought to ban abortion throughout his political career.
“Roe has been a stain on our court system for nearly 50 years,” Wicker wrote in a November 2021 SuperTalk op-ed. “It has allowed unborn children to be aborted for any reason or no reason, resulting in over 62 million deaths and counting. The legal gymnastics used to defend abortion in court have made a mockery of our Constitution. And our democracy has suffered, with state lawmakers limited in their ability to enact pro-life protections.”
Before the Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Wicker introduced bills to overturn the case in multiple legislative sessions. The senator also supported an unsuccessful 2015 bill to ban federal funding for Planned Parenthood. When he served in the U.S. House of Representatives, he voted to ban intact dilatation and extraction abortions. During his time in the U.S. House and Senate, he has co-sponsored personhood-style life-at-conception bills. As a Mississippi state senator, he sponsored legislation that placed regulations on abortion clinics and created the 24-hour wait time for abortions.
“As a U.S. Senator, I will continue supporting efforts to protect unborn life at the federal level,” Wicker said in a press release on June 27, 2022. “I will also continue advocating for conscience protections for doctors and medical staff who do not wish to participate in abortion. In addition, Republicans will continue fighting to preserve the Hyde Amendment so that taxpayer dollars are not spent on abortion.”
Pinkins’ key message about abortion throughout his campaign has been that, as a man, he cannot become pregnant or give birth to a child, so he should not have input on a woman’s decision of whether or not to have an abortion.
“As a man, I’m not qualified to tell a woman what to do with her body. I don’t meet that qualification. Neither does Sen. Wicker. Neither does Donald Trump,” he said. “That’s a choice between a woman, her doctor and if she chooses, her God. That is all up to her.”
Pinkins said that since every state has its own laws regarding abortions, a pregnant woman has to be careful when traveling out of state because she might not be able to obtain an abortion in certain states. He said state-by-state abortion laws also limit where women can live because some women may not want to reside in a state where abortion is illegal. Men who seek vasectomies or Viagra prescriptions are not limited in where they can travel or live, he noted.
He said codifying the protections of Roe v. Wade is the best way to give women the choice of what to do with their bodies rather than letting each state write its own abortion policy.
Reproductive Rights Go Beyond Abortion Access
On June 13, Sen. Roger Wicker voted against the Democratic-sponsored Right to IVF Act, a federal plan to give women, military members and veterans the right to access in-vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments, as well as expand fertility treatment access through insurance. Vice President Kamala Harris condemned the nay votes and said she wanted to protect access to fertility treatments through a bill that would restore reproductive freedom.
Senate Republicans sponsored their own IVF access bill that promised to withhold Medicaid funding from states that ban IVF, but Democrats blocked it on Sept. 12. A few weeks later, when debating Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump called himself “a leader on fertilization, IVF” and said that his administration would make IVF free for all Americans, either through taxes or by requiring insurance companies to cover procedures.
Wicker has not made any public comment regarding his own views on IVF.
Ty Pinkins said the definition of reproductive rights not only includes abortion access, but also access to birth control, contraception, in-vitro fertilization and safety at the doctors’ office. Reproductive rights extend to women feeling that their doctor is listening to them and is providing the best health care possible, he said.
Infant and maternal mortality are linked to reproductive rights, the Democratic candidate added, arguing that codifying Roe v. Wade would help Mississippi improve its maternal and infant health outcomes, which currently lag behind the rest of the nation’s.
“If a woman gets pregnant in our state, depending on the county, there’s a higher likelihood that she’ll die in this state quicker than in other countries. That’s not something that Sen. Wicker or anybody should be celebrating. They should be working day and night to make sure that women can make their own health care decisions, and that includes codifying Roe v. Wade,” Pinkins said.
Read more coverage of this year’s election cycle at our Elections Zone 2024 page.
