The so-called "personhood" law is the latest gimmick by anti-abortion activists to overturn Roe v Wade by focusing on zygotes' due process and equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment. This time, however, advocates are tweaking the ballot language and dropping the controversial "life begins at conception" argument for the more amorphous "at the beginning of biological development" in order to rally for fertilized eggs, clones and in-vitro embryos.
What the anti-choice groups may lack in serious constitutional law scholarship they make up for with sophisticated charitable fund raising campaigns to fuel state initiatives and a nationwide barnstorming tour to build local support for what its own proponents admit is a last ditch effort to outlaw abortion and curb comprehensive reproductive care according to fundamentalist Christian religious beliefs.
The biggest national driver in the state-led battles is the ultra-conservative Catholic anti-choice group, American Life League, a group that long-split with National Right to Life over what the more radicalized ALL and its allies considered was taking a too timid approach to federal legislation to ban abortion.
Schisms within the anti-choice movement are fairly typical and have spawned a series of like-named organizations tromping on well-worn political territory and jostling for the attention of like-minded donors.
And there are hints that the Montana conference could be an early sign of the latest breach in the high stakes game of anti-abortion supremacy.
Personhood USA is conspicuously absent from the three-city Oct. 16-18 tour hosted by the Montana Pro-Life Coalition, the primary sponsor of CI-102, the official name of the state's personhood constitutional initiative.
The Denver-based group was founded this year from the ashes of Colorado's first-in-the-nation personhood ballot measure that went to state voters. Though the 2008 initiative was thoroughly drubbed by a 73-27 margin, the Colorado supporters recast themselves as a national organization to ostensibly lead dozens of state efforts in 2010 and beyond.
The Montana group's first attempt to reach the 2008 ballot failed after collecting less than two-thirds of the 48,000 petition signatures needed. Which makes the Personhood USA snub even more curious since its founders were actively involved in the Colorado petition process and exceeded the state's signature threshold by 70 percent.
Organizers with Personhood USA couldn't be reached for comment.
But then again how does one compete for face time in a state with a high number of Catholics when Montana confab headliner and ALL president Judie Brown is billed as "an adviser to the Pope himself."
Though it's unclear whether ALL's "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy" signs and its campaign to derail health care reform will affect future Papal audiences after American Catholic groups denounced the effort as "failing the most basic test of human decency" and the Vatican had publicly expressed support for the president's initiative.
Joining Brown on the personhood stump through Great Falls, Missoula and Helena are two African-American anti-abortion activists who have repeatedly referred to abortion as a "black genocide." Rev. Walter Hoye from Oakland, Calif., who is sponsoring the personhood initiative in California, and Dallas-based Pastor Steven Broden are steeped in the confrontational clinic protest tactics first initiated by ALL in the 1980s.
What's a bit harder to bridge in the personhood confab strategy is the simple truth that Montana's political culture is world's apart from urban centers, like Oakland and Dallas. The entirety of Montana's black community consists of 6,200 people, or less than one percent of the entire state population. While residents are nearly evenly divided between urban centers and rural communities they are singularly united by a uniquely Western pseudo-libertarian "stay out of my business" perspective on all things political.
And that voter sentiment, and emerging 2010 ballot opposition strategy, was clearly noted by Allyson Hagen, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Montana.
"We will not allow extremist organizations to use our state constitution to play games with women's health," said Hagen. "These groups are not interested in the real-world implications that eliminating our privacy rights and restricting access to abortion care and birth control will have on the health and safety of the women in our lives."
Yet, the state is likely to remain as one of the more fertile epicenters of the anti-choice movement with a coterie of paleo-conservative state lawmakers pushing multiple legislative bans on abortion, an unencumbered citizen initiative process that mainlines radical ideas onto the ballot and a relatively inexpensive media market to campaign statewide.
Just the kind of out of the way place for religious political activists to go barnstorming on a states' rights cram session to find the mythical silver bullet to repeal women's reproductive rights.
