Anti-Abortion Group Pushes Failed "Personhood" Strategy
by Wendy Norris, RH Reality Check
December 5, 2008 - 8:00am (Print)
Despite a crushing 3-to-1 loss of a pioneering, but controversial, state constitutional amendment to confer civil rights on fertilized human eggs, an American Life League spokesperson made a curious slip of the tongue in a weird silver-lining statement about the organization’s future plans to ban abortion.
The league’s communications director, Katie Walker, offered this startling admission to the Christian newswire OneNewsNow.com about the league’s future political strategies:
The idea of personhood in this movement is really the only thing, the only option left to us, and it’s one of the best options and one of the most beautiful concepts I’ve heard in a long time, she contends. We’re very excited about it.
Is one of the major players in the anti-abortion movement waving the white flag of surrender?
Not so fast. Why do that when, as Walker continues in a bizarre bit of revisionist Colorado political history, backpedaling can get the job done to downplay Amendment 48’s bruising 73-27 loss:
The fact that they got 27 percent of Colorado, which is historically a liberal state, is very hopeful, I think, she notes.
Huh? Historically liberal state? The one that George W. Bush carried in both 2000 and 2004 by sizeable margins? The state in which 53 percent of the voters approved Amendment 2 in 1992, which would have barred civil rights protections for gay and lesbians until it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court? The state that, until four years ago, held large Republican majorities in the General Assembly and its congressional delegation for decades?
And the state where U.S. News and World Report noted that the Colorado personhood measure went down in flames 65-35 in conservative El Paso County, in the backyard of Focus on the Family and a host of state and national anti-abortion groups and conservative candidates, like Bob Schaffer.
As we reported Nov. 7, the group Personhood USA is undaunted and claims to be picking up the mantle of Colorado for Equal Rights with plans to introduce the “egg as a person” measure to 16 states that opponents say would not only outlaw abortion, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research but also certain forms of contraception.
Hat tip to Right Wing Watch.org
Fertilized egg civil rights is a non-starter. See the discussion at:
The term "fertilized egg" is used by those who don't want to answer the question of when an individual human's life begins. Calling a tiny human being in the zygote stage a "fertilized egg" is meant to dehumanize that person so it can be killed with impunity. It's also unscientific. You won't find that term used in any embryology textbook. It unveils a snickering, condescending, belligerantly ignorant attitude on the part of someone who is willing to deny civil rights to the most defenseless and vulnerable among us.
Ah...civil rights.
One more time, I train horses for a living, a high risk occupation. I'm two months along, unhappily and unwillingly pregnant in a post-Roe world.
I go headlong off a sassy colt, hit the ground hard, and miscarry. Despite the bruises and lumps, I'm over the moon, and back astride the following day.
My civil right to the occupation I am qualified and entitled to pursue has just resulted in the death of another human being.
What would you charge me with?
@ahunt
Or if I found out I was pregnant and deliberately lost a lot of weight and miscarried as a result...I wonder if this would be a death penalty-worthy offense. Especially given that so many people who call themselves 'pro-life' think the death penalty is fantastic and should be used more often.
Actually, my best friend was too stressed to quit smoking until two days after she found out she was pregnant (she's keeping the kid and is now seven months along). Maybe I should call the police and request that she be charged with, say, child endangerment. Heh.
an accident....sorry about losing your baby..might have been a champion rodeo rider....maybe some other time
billy
@Michaela
Funny to hear that from someone who refers to a zygote as a 'tiny human life' (I congratulate you for not having used 'unborn child'). You're deliberately trying to be emotive there, so it's a little hypocritical, I think, to be complaining about the use of the term 'fertilised egg'. It's also a bit ridiculous to pretend that an organism consisting of two haploid cells is comparable to a fully developed human. A zygote has human DNA, but that's its only human quality. A zygote failing to implant is about as tragic as a paper cut on one's finger.
Thank you for an engaging topic suitable for all types of discussion. I for one gave some thoguth to a comment I read off-page, that those who give fertilized human eggs civil rights might regret it later if the resulting human ended up gay.
What is really needed is an added clause in the civil rights granted to the fertilized egg (can we just shorten this to "ferg" - not to be confused with Fergie?) such that all the civil rights granted are conditional, and at the age of eighteen the person can be examined with a brain scan and if any homoerotic responses are detected, their conditional civil rights can then be canceled. Lawyers out there - will this work?
I'm sorry... only the bible is considered "scientific" to you
Ooops. See:
Reality Check-
Science and medicine trump antichoice ballot initiatives.
I wish everybody would stop being stupid and admit that emergency contraception prevents ovulation, so therefore there is no conception!
In addition to preventing ovulation, if taken after ovulation and fertilization, EC will prevent a newly formed human being from implanting by thinning the uterine lining. Birth control pills sometimes do this. IUD do this most of the time. A contraceptive that works (even sometimes) by preventing implantation is misnamed. When it acts after fertilization, it's an abortifacient. Sorry.
Look into breastfeeding. By your standards...breastfeeding acts as an abortifacient.
Oddly enough the radical fetus-fetishists don't seem to advocate women taking time off of work each month to mourn the "tiny human" that may have been shed with the uterine lining when they have a period each month, assuming they had been sexually active. Nature itself prevents a large number of fertilized eggs from implanting, more than we may ever know. I guess god is the biggest abortionist of them all.
Time for the hit with the clue-by-four... there is a reason pregnancy is not defined by medical science until AFTER implantation occurs. Until a zygote actually manages to attatch to the uterine lining and begin cell division, recognized by the woman's body and beginning the production of hormones, she is NOT PREGNANT. There is simply a new cell created by the joining of sperm and egg to create the zygote which has instead of the half number of chromosomes from each sex sell, a full set of 46. IF this new set of joined cells HAPPENS to implant it will begin the task (actually co-opting the woman's body for itself!) of beginning cell division for an embryonic human. Even then it is nowhere near the equivilent of a fully developed human being, but the woman IS pregnant.
Then again, why are we arguing medical logic with these people? In my case it must be early morning masochism.
By definition an abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by the removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. IF the fertilized egg has not implanted then pregnancy has not occurred AND it would not be an abortificiant. Stop being scientifically stupid there Michaela
"When it acts after fertilization, it's an abortifacient."
I've never seen one of you people respond to the fact that, even without contraceptives, most fertilized eggs (or, as you inaccurately say, 'newly formed human beings") are sloughed off naturally. And yet we have extreme social conservatives quibbling about the most effective forms of contraceptives and determined to deny the rest of us access to them.
So, what I want to know is when Pharmacists for Life and and the churches who preach this crap are going to start holding funerals and last rites for the 'newly formed human beings' who may be in your tampax every month? Otherwise we might think you're just a bunch of exceptionally neurotic control freaks with vivid fantasy lives.
Emma, SORRY for YOU, but EC is here to stay! I gave money to end these ridiculous ballot initiatives that define a zygote or fertilized egg, as a human being. They lost, in case you haven't noticed. YOU LOSE! Women will not be discriminated against, or have their fertility used against them. Too bad for you. Why don't you worry about your OWN uterus, and leave mine and my fellow women's ALONE!
I wish the "fertilized egg as person" proponents would carry their reasoning through to the logical conclusions.
Simply put, if a fertilized egg is a person, then there is virtually no area of public participation that women may not be excluded from, no aspect of any woman's life that may not be circumscribed/investigated, and no activity that may not be penalized.
you all are missing the goal about all the groups wanting to pass laws to make certain females are not able to prevent pregnancy. that goal is to control females.Take all paths to the antiabortion groups; they lead to control of the female.
OMG you don't say! Its so blatantly obvious, isn't it? I mean, the signs and slogans and tshirts and websites all talking about "saving lives" is actually all just some grand conspiracy meant to enslave women.
OMG. I hope Obama puts a smartie like you on his team ;)
How is making women's wombs the property of the state *not* a form of enslavement?
I consider Obama a pro-establishment conservative, by the way, so no need to tell me how much he's going to disappoint me.
Are you the same person as 'the raving atheist'?
Nope...I don't rave, I mock and joke. There are more than a few atheists against abortion.
I agree with you on Obama :)
everyone who wants to ban abortion subscribes to the notion that government-forced pregnancy isn't a big deal. Yet these same people aren't willing to prosecute pregnant women for murder, even while they want to do that to the doctor, and sometimes the boyfriend. It seems they're trying to hide their anti-woman side. This is a challenging task since you've just lobbied for laws that force her to be pregnant against her will.
But the anti-choice community consistently will choose restricting women's rights over life in every form, every time. Their hostility towards preventing abortion through increasing contraception access, which is what this is about, shows that it was never about abortion, but always about pushing an unrealistic and misanthropic loathing of sexuality.
Just because it's not a conspiracy doesn't mean that it's not a real problem. The anti-choice community is composed of a bunch of religious fanatics with extremely retrograde beliefs about gender roles, and a sprinkling of perhaps areligious men who have a lot of serious anger and resentment towards women they take out through anti-woman, anti-choice activism. Is this a coincidence? Could it be that only people who are gender essentialists and/or misogynists are also the only people who care about "life"? No, of course not. In fact, liberals and feminists put far more effort into the preservation of life than the conservatives who pretend to be martyrs. Having eliminated coincidence, we must conclude that hostility towards women's liberation is the reason.
Indeed Amanda. I've often been struck by the disconnect between some prolifer assurances that women are entitled to equal rights under the law and the simultaneous advocacy of policies that will serve to remove women from public life and re-institutionalize traditional gender roles.
I keep harping on this, all over the internet, using again and again the example closest to my own life, and not once has any prolifer responded. Ever.
The feeble attempt over at the Science and Medicine thread demonstrates just how invisible women are to the true believers. We exist only in terms of our wombs.
"...liberals and feminists put far more effort into the preservation of life than the conservatives..."
I'll definitely agree with you on that one. The atrocities in Gaza are just the latest example. The correct answer isn't "well Israel was attacked so they gotta fight back," its "um....why can't we figure out a compromise that doesn't lead to killing civilians en masse?"
Nice post.Thanks..
In my honest opinion, we should all respect the rights of the individual to behave as they wish, as long as they are not causing harm to others by their actions (or inactions).
Smoking is a good example. I help many people to stop smoking using NLP and hypnosis, but have no issue with those who choose to continue smoking cigarettes, cigars, herbals mixtures (!) etc.
Where children (including those unborn) are affected, it is the right of the parent to decide for the child - unless negligence can be proven.
The same applies to all issues affecting health and well-being. Is there negligence in informed choice? And where does opinion become law?
The reason pro-lifers work to protect children from being brutally murdered through abortion is because they LOVE CHILDREN and love seeing them saved so they can live and bring so much joy to their families.
Pro-life activists OFTEN have fairly large families and come from good sized families. Its a love for children that grows out of many years of experience lived within good and healthy families that forms the desire to see others experience the same joy in their families.
I wouldn't hesitate a second to compare the family lives of specific pro-life activists to the family life experienced by Amanda Marcotte.
FYI - the personhood ballot in Colorado received TWICE AS MUCH SUPPORT for it then had been predicted.
That alone is extremely encouraging.
Always funny how the anti-abortion reacts. For me, if it is the men that were carrying the baby abortions would have been allowed a long time ago...
Why not to use contraception instead of killing unborn people?
Seeing the american discussino about aboution or anti-abortin with the eyes of a european is allway funny (even if this word does not fit to this theme)!
Fliesenhandel
