On Nov. 8, the people of Mississippi will be asked at the ballot box to speak for or against the personhood of the tiniest of our brothers and sisters with Initiative 26.

Charlie Mitchell, in his editorial of Oct. 16, misleads the reader when he says abortion since 1973 has been legal in all nine months of pregnancy and never has been limited to the first 12 weeks. Consider the “partial birth” federal legislation, terminating a pregnancy up to the moment of delivery. Its title speaks its barbaric truth.

The moving plight of infertile couples who seek the resources of in vitro will not be in placed in jeopardy by this amendment. Instead their embryos will now enjoy the full protection of our state’s hospitality.

If Charlie is correct and some methods of family planning are instead abortive in action, a conversation between physician and couple is long overdue. Full informed consent is the bedrock of our health care system.

I am a mom of nine “forming children.” We have a forming middle school child, a forming mid-adolescent, three forming young adults, three forming mid-adults and one formed soul in heaven. Several of these forming sons and daughters, though born, cannot yet “live independently of their mother” — and father.

In God’s eyes, I, too, remain a forming human woman, continuously in process of growth and redemption.

I am confident that the good people of Mississippi will speak up for our small brothers and sisters Nov. 8.

Geralyn Gray-Lewis, RN

Jackson