How many here recall the Mississippi Personhood Amendment of 2011?

[bullwinkle428]

In the end it wasn't even close. The Mississippi "personhood" amendment on Tuesday's ballot which would have legally defined human life as beginning at the moment of fertilization failed and by a very wide margin.

Mississippi voters soundly rejected the constitutional amendment, with 58 percent voting "no" and only 41 percent voting "yes."

Considered one of the nation's most conservative states Mississippi, many observers thought, would give the personhood amendment perhaps its best chance for passage anywhere in the U.S. Initially, it looked like the gamble might pay off, with support for the initiative running so strong that passage at one point was virtually taken as a given.

But opponents of the proposed personhood amendment waged an aggressive counter campaign that raised all kinds of troubling prospects should the amendment become law. For instance, they warned that the amendment raised the possibility that miscarriages would need to be investigated. Besides abortion, some birth control methods would become illegal, they said.

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2011/11/08/142159280/mississippi-voters-reject-personhood-amendment

The moral of the story? We need to confront the forced birthers directly with cold, hard facts, and genuinely likely scenarios that WILL occur once they've achieved their vision of Gilead.

Look, when the people of Missi-FREAKING-sippi were faced with possibility of the elimination of abortion within their state, they came out in DROVES, in an OFF-OFF-YEAR election, to strike that possibility down.

[Glorfindel]

1. I remember it well. I was living in Mississippi at the time.

Nobody I knew was in favor of the "personhood" amendment.

[Haggard Celine]

2. Mississippi isn't as conservative as a lot of politicians and preachers

like to think it is. In the last election we approved medical marijuana by 65-70% of the vote. But of course the Supreme Court here struck it down on a technicality, saying the people who organized to put the question on the ballot didn't do it quite right. So we've been waiting on the legislature ever since to pass a law making medical marijuana legal. Fat chance. They always find other things to do, and the Governor, I think, is against it.

There's a lot of good people in Mississippi, but all too often, when we let our opinions be known, they're flat out ignored. That's why there's so much voter apathy here. There was huge turnout for that last vote, but it got us exactly nowhere.

[Progressive Jones]

5. Never Say Die ! Keep those voters moving! Take over Mississippi ! nt

[Hekate]

3. When put to an actual vote by the electorate, these extreme bills fail. That's why legislatures did

… the dirty deed themselves — and that’s why voter suppression bills were taken to state legislatures as well.

That’s also why the extreme RW has worked so hard for so long to get “their kind” onto the Supreme Court.

The one thing that keeps me from completely giving up on this country is that time after time the actual majority of its citizens votes for the Democrat for POTUS.

The thing that makes me utterly despair is how corrupted the system has become, and how very much we have fallen into a rule by minority.

[bullwinkle428]

4. So about those "trigger laws", that will automatically outlaw abortion in many

states once Roe v. Wade is overturned - apparently, there are some national-level Republicans that are absolutely crapping their pants about that!

They were desperately hoping to see the state legislatures hold off on abortion bans until after the 2022 Midterms, but the trigger laws will automatically kick in, without any action at all by the state reps and senators. They are TERRIFIED over the potential tsunami reaction on the part of voters.

[Progressive Jones]

6. I guess they have some decisions to make, if they're not complete cowards. nt

[Polybius]

7. Anti-abortioners told voters to vote against it

I can't remember why, but I believe it was the wording.