From Jackson, Miss., the AP reports:

"Republican Gov. Haley Barbour said Wednesday that he likely would sign a bill to ban most abortions in Mississippi if it's approved by lawmakers. The state already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.

"The bill that passed the House Public Health Committee on Tuesday would allow abortion only to save the pregnant woman's life. It would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.

"South Dakota lawmakers passed a similar bill last week that was intended to provoke a court showdown over the legality of abortion. Responding to questions about whether he'd sign a bill with no exceptions for rape or incest, Barbour said:

"'It hasn't gotten to my desk yet. When one gets there, we'll find out, and I suspect I'll sign it. But I would certainly rather it come to my desk with an exception for rape and incest. I think that's consistent with the opinion of the vast majority of Mississippians and Americans.'"

Having known and very much enjoyed the sense of humor and political brilliance of this memorable governor, from the time he headed the Republican National Committee in Washington, I am distressed indeed that there is any chance that he would sign into law any measure denying the relief of abortion to all victims of rape – however young – and to all victims of incest.

Will the legislatures of South Dakota and Mississippi also pass legislation requiring death certificates and burials for all spontaneous abortions? (More familiarly known as miscarriages.)

And if not, why not?

If a victim of rape or incest – both of which are against the law – is forced by law to come full term with the result of the unlawful rape and incest – is this not an absolutely barbaric and legally contradictory insistence on carrying out what the laws of rape and incest and marriage are designed to prevent?

Is there not some aspect of accessory-after-the-fact when any state has laws prohibiting rape and incest – but then passes a law demanding the same pregnancies, which the law prohibits in marriage?

Would either South Dakota or Mississippi be willing to revise their law that all persons' ages are determined by their date of birth – so that all of their citizens would, in one vote, become nine months older?

That would appear to be very doubtful. But the abortion prohibitionists use that verbal ruse "pro-life" in an attempt to portray their opponents as "baby killers."

This necessitates a contention that a human being is created at the instant of conception – when the united sperm and egg are invisible to the naked eye.

Yet when a girl of 13 is gang-raped and impregnated, the right-to-life people (including legislators in South Dakota and Mississippi) contend that aborting the result – no matter how microscopic – is murder.

There have been those who have strongly opposed any inhibition, chemical or otherwise, of invisible sperm reaching invisible egg.

Since both sperm and egg are invisible – as is the initially fertilized egg – why should these joined invisibilities be proclaimed as "unborn children"?

Their composite parts, the egg and the sperm, are surely nowhere similarly saluted as "unconceived children," are they?

If Roe v. Wade is ever set aside by either the Supreme Court or by constitutional amendment, how long would it take before all contraceptives were outlawed as they were before the case of Griswold v. Connecticut?