Phil Bryant

Mississippi Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, who was elected as governor yesterday, also co-chaired “Yes on 26,” the campaign to pass a “Personhood” amendment in the state, and said on Election Day that the fight over Initiative 26 was “a battle of good and evil of Biblical proportions” and warned that “Satan wins” if the initiative fails. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, which heavily funded the “Yes on 26” effort, warned that the country would face God’s judgment if Initiative 26 lost and urged voters to “choose life lest the flickering flame of our liberty be extinguished forever.”

But the initiative did indeed fail, with a whopping 58% of Mississippi voters rejecting the extreme personhood law.

Along with Personhood USA and the American Family Association, Religious Right groups including the Family Research Council, Faith 2 Action and Liberty Counsel all backed Initiative 26.

Hours after the initiative was trounced at the polls, anti-choice activists are already blaming Planned Parenthood, the media, and Satan for the defeat.

Personhood USA’s Keith Ashley pledged to bring the personhood initiative back to the Mississippi ballot:

Personhood USA firmly believes that our campaign fell victim to the outright lies of our opposition, and because of their lies, children will continue to be murdered in Mississippi.

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We recognize that the right time to end abortion in Mississippi is now, and that is why the citizens of Mississippi will attempt a personhood ballot measure again—and again, if necessary—until every person’s life is protected.

Brad Prewitt, the executive director of “Yes on 26,” likened the personhood fight to the struggle against slavery, and Gualberto Garcia Jones of Personhood USA blamed the media and the “culture of death” for the defeat, in interviews with the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow:

"It's easy to look at things in a linear fashion, but we know that God's provision is not easily discernible by us in terms of his will -- and we have to await his will," he tells OneNewsNow. "And in the meantime, we have to be committed to biblical truth."

Meanwhile, Prewitt stresses the pro-life movement is not on life support in Mississippi. "There has been and there will continue to be a pro-life movement in Mississippi," he assures. "William Wilberforce started the anti-slave movement in England [in the late 1700s] and it was a 20-something year process. So if you have to start somewhere, I think it was a productive dialogue to have."

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A spokesman for Personhood USA say advocacy groups for personhood learned a lot from the campaign. "I think definitely the lies that were put out there by Planned Parenthood definitely took their toll on the people of Mississippi, and a lot of them believed them," says Gualberto Garcia Jones.

He laments that that misinformation converted to no votes on Election Day, even among pro-life residents.

"One of the things that was very telling to me was that the media, even in a conservative state such as Mississippi, was incredibly negative," Jones notes. "We had to battle uphill the whole time. They just carried the water for the opposition at every level.

"It's an indicator of how deep the culture of death has taken root of our nation.

Susan Tyrrell of Lou Engle’s Bound4Life wrote that it was a victory for “the kingdom of Satan”:

When push came to shove Tuesday night, Mississippians voted that the unborn could not be defined as people according to the proposed personhood amendment.

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The kingdom of Satan is united, which is why, for this season, it’s successful. Eventually the church will be united. At the end of the age we will be a powerful, praying church that stands for the only definition of justice that exists: the Jesus one. But right now we’re not there. I don’t want to be cynical. I know many wonderful praying people of all denominations who stand for LIFE and the word of God. We are advancing, but tonight, once again, we have let the kingdom of darkness advance ahead of us.

Last week Right Wing Watch reported on the success of anti-choice activists to place a “Personhood Amendment” on Mississippi’s 2011 ballot to coincide with the gubernatorial election. The radical group Personhood USA hopes to use the so-called “Personhood Amendments” to criminalize abortion, common forms of birth control, stem cell research, and even in-vitro fertilization, by giving legal rights to fetuses and embryos.

Major anti-choice organizations including the National Right to Life Committee have generally shied away from “Personhood Amendments” due to the extreme nature of the measure and the fringe Personhood USA. Colorado voters rejected three different Amendments from Personhood Colorado by wide margins, with the 2010 measure failing with less than 30% of the vote.

Activists in Mississippi, however, have made great headway in receiving support from the Religious Right and the GOP. Leading Religious Right groups and Republican politicians, including the American Family Association (AFA), Liberty Counsel, and Congressman-Elect Alan Nunnelee, have backed Personhood Mississippi’s efforts. Mississippi’s Republican Lt. Governor and gubernatorial candidate Phil Bryant has embraced the Personhood Initiative as well. Bryant, when announcing his bid for governor on the AFA’s radio program, claimed that “one of my goals in public life is to end abortion in Mississippi, so we’re going to work really hard on that.” A vocal and ardent supporter of the “Personhood Amendment,” Bryant called the initiative “another way of trying to stop abortion in Mississippi and simply allow once and for all the opportunity for the people to say we want to do that and we feel so strongly about it that we want to add it to our Constitution.”

Today, Personhood Mississippi (the state affiliate of Personhood USA) will be hosting a rally in Jackson to celebrate the measure’s inclusion on the 2011 ballot, and Bryant is scheduled to speak at the event.

But who is behind Personhood Mississippi and the Personhood Amendment’s sponsor?

The head of Personhood Mississippi is right wing activist Les Riley, a featured blogger of the group Christian Exodus, which has “goal of forming an independent Christian nation that will survive after the decline and fall of the financially and morally bankrupt American empire.”

Christian Exodus had attempted to move thousands of supporters to South Carolina in order to “form a biblically inspired government and secede from the United States,” and also has close ties to the separatist and Neo-Confederate League of the South. Christian Exodus also is encouraging adherents to move to Panama and Idaho in order to build theocratic settlements.

Lt. Governor Bryant said he wanted to “personally thank Les Riley” for his work, and Les Riley told AFA Radio that Mississippi’s Personhood Amendment is “the biggest news in the pro-life movement in twenty years” because it will not only eradicate reproductive rights in Mississippi but also set up a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.

As the “Personhood Amendment” movement finds more allies and greater support in the Religious Right and Republican Party, its extremist leaders and radical beliefs have not changed.