By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Mississippi voters’ rejection Tuesday of a proposed constitutional amendment declaring that personhood begins at the moment of fertilization likely means that a similar measure would not pass in Arkansas, the executive director of Arkansas Right to Life said Wednesday.

“Mississippi is the most pro-life state in the country. They have more protective measures than just about any other state that I know of,” said Rose Mimms of Little Rock. “If they couldn’t pass it in Mississippi, I don’t think Arkansas has a very good chance either.”

The closely watched proposal on Mississippi’s ballot failed by a margin of 58 percent to 42 percent. Similar measures were defeated in Colorado in 2008 and 2010, both also by double-digit margins.

A ballot question committee has formed in Arkansas to seek to put a similar measure on Arkansas’ 2012 general election ballot and advocate for its passage. Preston Dunn Jr. of Blytheville, the president of Personhood Arkansas, did not return calls seeking comment today, but he told the Arkansas News Bureau last week that passage of the Mississippi amendment would be “a great shot in the arm” for the Arkansas effort.

If that effort goes ahead, Arkansas Right to Life will not be part of it, according to Mimms.

“I wish them the very best, but we won’t be joining their efforts,” she said. “We’ve got our own work to do.”

The Mississippi amendment drew opposition from, among others, the Mississippi State Medical Association. Critics said it included no exceptions for rape and incest, would inhibit the treatment of pregnant women in medical emergencies, would hamper fertility treatments and would outlaw some birth control pills.

Mimms said the defeat of the Mississippi amendment signals that now is not the time for such a big step.

“The timing is just not right. We don’t have the majority that we need to pass measures like that,” she said.

Mimms said Arkansas Right to Life is focused on educating the public about abortion and opposing efforts by Planned Parenthood to increase access to abortion in the state — not on getting abortion banned outright in 2012.

She added that passage of the Mississippi measure could have backfired.

“It would have been challenged immediately,” she said. “Who knows how long it would have taken it to go through the courts, and even if the Supreme Court were to have taken it up, who knows if we would have got a good decision on it?”

The ultimate outcome, Mimms said, could have been a ruling affirming and strengthening the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision establishing a woman’s right to an abortion.

“You go in thinking this measure will do this, and then before you know it it’s done a lot of other things that you might not have thought it would do, like push us back another 10 or 15 years in our struggle to overturn Roe,” she said.

Gov. Mike Beebe said Wednesday he would have “no way to speculate” on whether such a measure could pass in Arkansas. The Democratic governor said the Mississippi measure apparently had some problems.

“I noticed that Gov. (Haley) Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi, indicated that he had some problems with the wording and the language and the unintended consequences. The fact that he said that causes me to believe that there might be a lot of people down there that had studied it, and looked at it, and thought it might cause some problems” Beebe said.

Barbour has said he had concerns about the amendment’s effect on the treatment of ectopic pregnancies, in which a fertilized egg lodges somewhere other than the uterus, but he also has said that he voted for the measure and believes that life begins at conception.

Personhood Arkansas’ first hurdle will be getting language for a ballot question approved by Attorney General Dustin McDaniel. If McDaniel approves the language, the group will have to collect 78,133 signatures of registered Arkansas voters by July 6 to place the measure on the November 2012 ballot.

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Reporter Rob Moritz contributed to this report.