Since June 27, 2022 (three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade), Mississippi has prohibited nearly all abortions. According to the 2007 bill that resulted in that ban, "every human being, including those in utero, possesses a natural intrinsic right to live." It is therefore hard to understand why Brandy Moore, a mother of four who lives in Leake County, Mississippi, was recently arrested for a felony because she decided not to have an abortion back in 2019, when the procedure was still legal in her state.
The explanation for that puzzling situation lies at the confluence between the war on drugs and a child protection system that often breaks up families without solid evidence of neglect or abuse. In this case, that dangerous combination was compounded by a local prosecutor, District Attorney Steven Kilgore, who for years deployed patently frivolous criminal charges in an attempt to get drug-using mothers the help he thought they needed, whether they wanted it or not.
