The Personhood Amendments are a new tool in the forced-birthers arsenal. This time the state of Mississippi looks to pass a constitutional amendment that makes a fertilized egg into a person:
A constitutional amendment facing voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8, and similar initiatives brewing in half a dozen other states including Florida and Ohio, would declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person, effectively branding abortion and some forms of birth control as murder.Such fun and games. And what about criminal laws? Every miscarriage is a potential murder and must be examined, if we take all this seriously. Pregnant women cannot enter any place where children are not allowed and so on. Women who have been raped must carry the pregnancy to term, no exceptions!
With this far-reaching anti-abortion strategy, the proponents of what they call personhood amendments hope to reshape the national debate.
“I view it as transformative,” said Brad Prewitt, a lawyer and executive director of the Yes on 26 campaign, which is named for the Mississippi proposition. “Personhood is bigger than just shutting abortion clinics; it’s an opportunity for people to say that we’re made in the image of God.”
Many doctors and women’s health advocates say the proposals would cause a dangerous intrusion of criminal law into medical care, jeopardizing women’s rights and even their lives.
The amendment in Mississippi would ban virtually all abortions, including those resulting from rape or incest. It would bar some birth control methods, including IUDs and “morning-after pills,” which prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. It would also outlaw the destruction of embryos created in laboratories.
The amendment has been endorsed by candidates for governor from both major parties, and it appears likely to pass, said W. Martin Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University. Legal challenges would surely follow, but even if the amendment is ultimately declared unconstitutional, it could disrupt vital care, critics say, and force years of costly court battles.
Do you notice something truly interesting about these types of initiatives? They are not only going to make abortion illegal in almost all cases. They are also going to make the IUD and "morning-after pills" illegal. These are all female choices concerning pregnancy and childbirth. It's those choices that these initiatives will remove. Every sperm is sacred and so on.
Because these egg-Americans are invisible for several months, all women also become their potential incubators and must be under careful supervision lest they manage to disguise the presence of that other person, give that person a bad environment or even kill it.
It's a nightmare world, it is. And the personhood of egg-Americans means that women's personhood will be drastically reduced.
That's why I hope that this is all just a bad dream.