Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and several other Mississippi politicians make clear that they don’t think the government should mandate vaccination against COVID-19. They take a different stance on bodily autonomy when it comes to a woman or girl deciding whether to have an abortion.
In arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 1, the Mississippi attorney general’s office defended a 2018 state law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks. The state solicitor general, Scott Stewart, also tried to persuade justices to overturn the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States and its 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed Roe.
Reeves was lieutenant governor when the 15-week ban was pushed into law, and he has said repeatedly that he wants to restrict abortion. When Reeves appeared on “Meet the Press” days before the Supreme Court arguments, the show played a video clip of Reeves saying COVID-19 vaccine mandates were a “power grab” by the federal government.