Voters Tuesday rejected the Mississippi Personhood Amendment brought forth by pro-life advocates that would have defined life as starting at conception.
If amendment 26, otherwise known as "Personhood," had passed it would have shaken the foundations of the decades-old Roe Vs. Wade ruling and re-opened the abortion debate, according to CNN.
"I think voters rejected a measure they understood to be dangerous," Mississippi for Healthy Families Campaigner Felicia Brown-Williams told CNN. "They really tried to manipulate values around faith and family."
If the ammendment had been passed, state legislature would be compelled to create laws to govern it, according to CNN.
"Even in a conservative state, tonight's vote reaffirms that people do not want government intruding in personal decisions best made by a woman, her family and her doctor," Jennifer Dalven, director of the American Civil Liberties Union reproductive freedom project, told CNN.
The amendment would have banned forms of contraception that work after a woman's egg is fertilized, CNN reports. It would have also brought into question in-vitro fertilization, which uses and sometimes destroys fertilized eggs.
