How will Mississippi’s abortion ban be enforced? Coast police don’t know or won’t say.

After Mississippi’s abortion trigger law went into effect July 7, all abortions except in cases of rape and danger to the life of the mother are classified as felonies. Providers of illegal abortions, defined by law to include those who provide or prescribe pills to induce miscarriage, will now face up to 10 years in prison.

But questions remain regarding how the law will actually be enforced. Two Mississippi district attorneys, in Jackson and Natchez, have pledged not to prosecute abortions.

Meanwhile, the offices of Coast district attorneys W. Crosby Parker and Angel Myers McIlrath have not returned repeated Sun Herald inquiries over the last week regarding whether and how they will prosecute abortions.

The Sun Herald also contacted law enforcement agencies, which are tasked with investigating crimes before they can be prosecuted.

A spokeswoman for Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell told the Sun Herald the abortion ban wouldn’t affect law enforcement in the county because the state’s only abortion clinic is in Jackson. Asked about cases involving at-home or otherwise illegally provided abortions, neither Ezell nor the spokeswoman, Marcia Hill, responded.

Gulfport police also did not respond to a Sun Herald inquiry.

Biloxi police spokesman Milton Houseman told the Sun Herald in an email the department is bound to investigate all reported felonies “in the same manner,” and that, “if an illegal abortion is classified as a felony, our understanding is that a police officer does not have discretion on enforcement.”

Houseman also said the department was awaiting “guidance from the State Attorney’s Office to help determine our investigative procedures,” but did not respond to a follow-up email asking whether the department had already requested such guidance.

Major O’Neil Adams, commander of the Biloxi police department’s criminal investigations division described the procedure for investigation of a reported felony in an interview with the Sun Herald.

Adams said that, whereas police officers are allowed discretion in the investigation of lesser crimes, anytime a potential felony is reported, a procedure is triggered and an investigator is assigned to the case.

This investigator must determine whether there are grounds to make an arrest before bringing the case before a judge, who would decide whether to issue an arrest warrant.

At this preliminary stage, in cases of reported abortions, Adams said, “we’d heavily rely on a doctor or a physician or somebody in a medical field to help guide us, because we’re police officers; we don’t know much about medical procedures or things like that.”

Adams said the purpose of such a consultation would be “to determine if this was an intentional act.”

Adams said no one employed by the Biloxi police is qualified to make such a determination. He noted that the department has worked with local physicians during investigations in the past, but said there was no particular doctor they would expect to rely on in abortion cases.