Jackson Free Press

"I don't know if (my) bill will survive if there's pending litigation."

—State Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, speaking about his introduction of a so-called "heartbeat" bill, which would mean revocation of medical licenses for doctors who perform abortions after 12 weeks when a heartbeat is detected.

Why it stinks: In several states, heartbeat bills have met legal fights from reproductive-rights advocates who say the bills are designed to trample on women's legal rights to obtain abortions. More broadly, target-regulation of abortion providers draws lawsuits wherever they are filed, even in conservative strongholds like Texas and Mississippi. So far, the results have been mixed as courts continue sorting it all out. But an all-too-common occurrence in the Mississippi Legislature involves lawmakers, who are often attorneys, and often Republicans, introducing resource-sucking bills when large questions already exist about the constitutionality of the proposals. Of course, there's nothing wrong with legislators holding their moral convictions, but when those convictions take the form of legislation that has a high—and expensive—probability for failure, they should probably be reserved for the campaign stump, not the Capitol.