Gov. Tate Reeves is urging ‘all citizens to celebrate the Sanctity of Life from the unborn to natural death, dedicated to the profound truth that all life is a gift from God.’
By Jean Mondoro
Editor’s note. This is taken from a post that appeared at LifeSiteNews and is reposted with permission.
The governor of Mississippi has declared June to be Sanctity of Life Month for second time since the historic overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves issued a proclamation on Tuesday urging “all citizens to celebrate the Sanctity of Life from the unborn to natural death, dedicated to the profound truth that all life is a gift from God, who endows every individual with immeasurable worth and potential.”
Reeves began the proclamation by lamenting the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade and the 1992 ruling Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which together resulted in “elective abortion end[ing] the lives of over 63 million unborn children, and in some cases, their mothers as well—nearly a complete generation lost to humanity.”
“We have a firm conviction that each life is precious and each individual is created in the image of God, as Psalm 139:13-14 reads: ‘For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.’”
Reeves also quoted President Ronald Reagan’s proclamation of the first National Sanctity of Human Life Day in January 1984, when he said that
“the values and freedoms we cherish as Americans rest on our fundamental commitment to the sanctity of human life.”
The first of all ‘unalienable rights’ affirmed by our Declaration of Independence is the right to life itself, a right the Declaration states has been endowed by our Creator on all human beings—whether young or old, weak or strong, healthy or handicapped,” Reagan’s remarks continued. “We are poorer not simply for lives not led and for contributions not made, but also for the erosion of our sense of the worth and dignity of every individual. To diminish the value of one category of human life is to diminish us all.”
Commemorating the Dobbs decision that declared there is no constitutional “right” to abortion and returned the issue of abortion to the states and elected representatives, Reeves wrote, “Standing on the shoulders of giants in the pro-life movement, we rejoice and press on knowing that our work is not yet done.”
The proclamation resembles one that he issued in June 2022, which also noted the role of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban in the successful reversal of Roe v. Wade. The following July, the state’s trigger law went into effect, banning abortion throughout pregnancy with exceptions when necessary to preserve the mother’s life and for rape, with abortions for rape being illegal after six weeks’ gestation.