Personhood amendments an extreme reach: potentially outlawing common forms of birth control and

[midnight]

abortion.


"Next Tuesday, Mississippians will go to the polls to decide on Initiative 26, a personhood amendment to the state constitution that defines a person as “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.” Personhood amendments represent an extreme reach into a family’s privacy, essentially criminalizing abortion and potentially outlawing common forms of birth control.
Right-wing supporters of Mississippi’s personhood amendment, however, decry the fact that the bill will ban birth control as “scare tactics.” “It’s an outright lie that Initiative 26 would ban birth control pills,” said American Family Association Executive Director Brad Prewitt. “Stopping a pregnancy is not the issue; ending a pregnancy is.” Unfortunately for proponents, the Personhood movement spokesman Walter Hoye stated the opposite on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show. As the Florida Independent reports, when asked if there were any restrictions on birth control in the amendment, Hoye answered “no…well, yes,” adding, “any birth control that ends the life of a human being will be impacted by this measure,” including the pill:
HOYE: Any birth control that ends the life of a human being will be impacted by this measure.
REHM: So that would then include the IUD . What about the birth control pill?
HOYE: If that falls into the same category, yes.
REHM: So you’re saying that the birth control pill could be considered as taking the life of a human being?
HOYE: I’m saying that once the egg and the oocyte come together and you have that single-celled embryo, at that point you have human life, you’ve got a human being and we’re taking the life of a human being with some forms of birth control and if birth control falls into that category, yes I am."

http://thinkprogress.org/

[DirkGently]

1. Yes, it will ban the pill. These people are lunatics.

[raccoon]

2. Will it make male masturbation a crime? Yes, these people are lunatics. nt

[Drale]

3. Unfortunately sometimes it takes the enacting

of what people think they want, to show them that their ideas don't work, or are extremely dangerous.

[DirkGently]

5. We're seeing a lot that. Busting unions. Firing teachers. Insane anti-abortion tactics.

Economic elites used to just use crazy to rationalize their own bottom line. Now crazy is happening, and they're going to have to explain why for some reason, crazy doesn't work.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. What gets me is that women voters, whose mothers fought to get the right to vote less than 100 years

ago, will go to the polls and effectively give up their fundamental rights to reproduction, religious choice, and human autonomy. It's more than criminalizing abortion. It's access to safe abortion; access to safe and reliable birth control; confidential and private medical services; the right to choose when to be a mother or the right to forego that lifestyle altogether; compelling women to choose to be a single mother with limited funds; to marry when a woman would rather not; to unwillingly give up a child to adoption, to bear a child against her will; to move to another state where laws are more woman-friendly. And to let a religion to which they don't belong to dictate the terms of their lives by coopting the government in order to do so.

[DirkGently]

11. Conservatives somehow think rights people fought for are just automatic. They think

they don't have to worry about government accusing or imprisoning or torturing the innocent (or killing women to enforce religious nuttery) because they're used to the luxury of rights "libruls" extracted by excruciating effort. They think civil rights and human rights and worker's rights are just part of the atmosphere, somehow.

[asjr]

6. Some drug manufacturers may get

in on this. It would cut down on their profits.

[LiberalEsto]

7. "Every sperm is sacred" nt

[Ship of Fools]

8. Question to anyone in the know:

I understand that TPTB involved in women's rights don't want to go to SCOTUS for obvious reasons, but would this NOT
be the time? Would the right-wing arm still agree with this insanity at this level? I'm curious ...

Thanks.

[LiberalEsto]

9. Two words:

Clarence Thomas

[Ship of Fools]

15. Understood, but is he STILL THAT BITTER?

Seems to me that he must have SOME concern for what's remaining of his credibility ... Oh well. n/t

[mainer]

10. No treatment for ectopic pregnancies. The woman must die...

to save the life of a blastocyst.

I pity the poor doctors who will go to jail for saving women's lives.

[Puzzler]

12. They'll be arresting women for miscarriages next...

... I'm serious.

[Zoeisright]

14. Oh, yeah. Making a uterus a crime scene is something those anti-choice hacks

dream of. It's the ultimate control of women.

[DirkGently]

16. They'll track each pregnancy in a database. If it doesn't come to term ... a "murder" investigation.

[zbdent]

13. if not outright outlawing birth control right now ...

guess what would be next on the agenda, if they outlaw abortion?

[jberryhill]

17. Roe v. Wade is not premised on whether a fetus is a "person"

I don't understand why people think that this tangential nonsense is at all pertinent to Roe v Wade - which assumed an unborn right to life. The point of the decision is that among the competing interests of the State, the woman, and the fetus, the balance of "whose rights prevail" shifts over the course of a pregnancy.

It was never about whether a fetus is a person.

[Dont call me Shirley]

18. The most backward whiteys in the nation. You have NO business in my body, KEEP OUT!

[mojowork_n]

19. It sounds ridiculous, but on Thom Hartmann this afternoon,

the point was made that these things are being very carefully written so there will be no undermining of "corporate personhood," if
any part of it actually makes it into law.

So someone has been spending a few bucks on lawyers.

[greymattermom]

20. period patrol

all women of reproductive age will have to save tampons and pads and bring them to the police every month. might just be a zygote in there after all.