From the Huffington Post:
If Mississippians vote to pass an unprecedented initiative on Tuesday that would declare a fertilized egg a legal person under the state Constitution, nobody — including the authors of the initiative — knows exactly how that law would be interpreted and enforced. But legal and medical experts are concerned that the “personhood” amendment could spur a litany of expensive court battles, bogus lawsuits and moral and political conundrums beyond the scope of women’s choice.
If Proposition 26 passes, it would ban all abortion for any reason. Additionally, it would probably ban all hormonal contraception like pills, rings loops, etc. It could easily affect in vitro fertilization, as well as throw suspicion on spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) and ectopic pregnancy. Rape, incest and fetal anomaly would have no bearing on easing restrictions.
Obviously Proposition 26 would currently be unconstitutional and would end up in the court system. It is unfathomable that Mississippi would proceed with such an absurd law, yet they are out voting on it today.
The inception of Proposition 26 didn’t start in Mississippi. The idea for it was apparently conceived by a group in Colorado. Mississippi is a test run of sorts. The state was probably chosen because it ranks 49th in education and is one of, if not the poorest state in the union based on median household income. The less people understand about biology and the difference in fertilization and conception, the easier it will be to pass an amendment this absurd in 2011. Doing away with modern birth control is probably the worst way to end abortion.
Mississippi will be burning tonight if this amendment passes. What are some outcomes that could spill over nationally from this draconian initiative? Could a woman add another dependent at the moment of conception? What if she was pregnant with twins or triplets. Would the state owe her money? How does this affect citizenship? If you are conceived in Mississippi are you automatically a citizen of the United States? How about inheritance laws? The questions are endless. Personhood is mentioned thousands of times in the state constitution. Mississippi is biting off quite a bit–probably much more than it can chew.
Disgusting……….
Take your religion and stay out of my reproductive rights. With the electoral sweep in VA, guarantee we are next.
The measure was defeated. However, this is just the first of many personhood amendments that we expect to see.
It wasn’t even a Mississippi initiative. It came out of Colorado because they couldn’t get it passed there, so they thought MS would be the likely choice. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for one of these to pass. They are too ambiguous and too extreme.
MS wasn’t chosen because it’s low in education (that’s lefty-thinking). It was chosen because it was seen as a very religious state (it still has dry counties, when I live there in the early 90s). I grant the high religion and low education do go together, but it wasn’t chosen because it was believed “everybody’s a backwards, uneducated hayseed”. Your slip, uh, er…liberalism is showing.
Where are all the anti-big government tijadis? I thought they would be applauding a move like this that would deny expanding the reach of big government.
Why? It wouldn’t have cost anything. No gov’t program would have been created.
@Cargosquid
Oh. So who’d enforce these measures? Who’d collect the data from doctors and decide whether to prosecute women for making any choice that the nanny state of Mississippi disapprove of? All those government employees would have to neglect some other task to do this for no increase in cost.
@Slowpoke Rodriguez
Hell Pokie, I would have said the same thing about Arkansas and my hero is from there.
Yes, I think Colorado was saying it was a dumb ass state. Do you think educated people are going to vote to not allow contraception? It seems like Mississippie fooled them and us. They weren’t as hokie as originally thought. I never thought it would pass, although probably not because of my great faith in people from Mississippi.
I think there, its either feast or famine. William Faulkner is from Mississippi.
@Moon-howler
Yes, but he had the sense to move to Virginia.
thank goodness, even mississippi thought this was too extreme
If he saw the after affects of this election he might keep right on trucking also, Censored.
Holy cow. I guess Obama sure jup a lot of folks’ ideological senses.
The sound and the fury of ideology will hurt one’s ears.
@Censored
Actually, this Prop 26 was probably misguided religion rather than ideology. Somewhere there’s a difference. I acually think the people who stirred it up were religious nuts and they preyed upon people who really didn’t realize the difference between fertilization and implantation. Its sad and shows that we must always be on our guard.