“Personhood” Ballot Defeated in Mississippi

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Women and men in Mississippi breathed a collective sigh of relief this Election Day when “Initiative 26,” a measure that would have granted personhood to a fetus and criminalize abortion altogether (and violating Roe v. Wade in the process), failed to pass. The entire amendment would have redefined what “human” status means, which could have even resulted in women being prosecuted for their own miscarriages (as some have in select states already).

We have to wonder at logic like this. If you define a person at conception, does that mean any woman taking birth control is a murderer, since oral contraception may not prevent actual fertilization, but attachment to the uterine wall (for a full lowdown, check out Rachel Maddow’s “Man Cave” explanation about how hormonal contraceptives work!)? Would we have to give social security cards to embryos—and what about birth certificates? Would they change to conception certificates? Since you won’t know the sex of the embryo until it’s born, that would certainly be a fun process! (In fact, withholding the sex until long after birth might be the only upside to the entire scenario.)

How much further would this go? My husband and I like to joke that a wasted egg, released during ovulation, and wasted sperm, released during masturbation, might qualify one for, say, involuntary manslaughter. It just boggles my mind that measures like this one are still being suggested for law in the year 2011. You say you want less government involvement, conservatives? Stop involving yourself in my uterus!

And for those men who claim that abortion and related issues are “wedge issues” that do not matter to them, you are ridiculous. I know men who say, “Well, I support a woman’s right to choose, but Roe v. Wade will never be overturned so I don’t worry about it.” Really, brainiac? That’s your logic, when we just had the largest wave of sweeping anti-choice legislation implemented this year—including measures to restrict when a woman can have an abortion, mandates that she must have an ultrasound (sometimes a vaginal one, which I can say from experience is extremely unpleasant), parental consent laws, and many other measures on top of the fact that women in over 80% of the country do not have access to safe, legal abortion? Yeah, your logic fails.

And so does any candidate who doesn’t support a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions.