Page 1 of 7 123 ... LastLast
Results 1 to 30 of 193

Thread: Push for ‘Personhood’ Amendment Represents New Tack in Abortion Fight

  1. #1

    Default Push for ‘Personhood’ Amendment Represents New Tack in Abortion Fight

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/us...ions.html?_r=1

    The New York Times

    October 25, 2011

    Push for ‘Personhood’ Amendment Represents New Tack in Abortion Fight

    By ERIK ECKHOLM

    A constitutional amendment facing voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8, and similar initiatives brewing in half a dozen other states including Florida and Ohio, would declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person, effectively branding abortion and some forms of birth control as murder.

    With this far-reaching anti-abortion strategy, the proponents of what they call personhood amendments hope to reshape the national debate.

    “I view it as transformative,” said Brad Prewitt, a lawyer and executive director of the Yes on 26 campaign, which is named for the Mississippi proposition. “Personhood is bigger than just shutting abortion clinics; it’s an opportunity for people to say that we’re made in the image of God.”

    Many doctors and women’s health advocates say the proposals would cause a dangerous intrusion of criminal law into medical care, jeopardizing women’s rights and even their lives.

    The amendment in Mississippi would ban virtually all abortions, including those resulting from rape or incest. It would bar some birth control methods, including IUDs and “morning-after pills,” which prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. It would also outlaw the destruction of embryos created in laboratories.

    The amendment has been endorsed by candidates for governor from both major parties, and it appears likely to pass, said W. Martin Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University. Legal challenges would surely follow, but even if the amendment is ultimately declared unconstitutional, it could disrupt vital care, critics say, and force years of costly court battles.

    “This is the most extreme in a field of extreme anti-abortion measures that have been before the states this year,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group.

    Opponents, who were handing out brochures on Saturday to tailgate partiers before the University of Southern Mississippi football game in Hattiesburg, said they hoped to dispel the impression that the amendment simply bars abortions — a popular idea in Mississippi — by warning that it would also limit contraceptives, make doctors afraid to save women with life-threatening pregnancies and possibly hamper in vitro fertility treatments.

    The drive for personhood amendments has split the anti-abortion forces nationally. Some groups call it an inspired moral leap, while traditional leaders of the fight, including National Right to Life and the Roman Catholic bishops, have refused to promote it, charging that the tactic is reckless and could backfire, leading to a Supreme Court defeat that would undermine progress in carving away at Roe v. Wade.

    The approach, granting legal rights to embryos, is fundamentally different from the abortion restrictions that have been adopted in dozens of states. These try to narrow or hamper access to abortions by, for example, sharply restricting the procedures at as early as 20 weeks, requiring women to view ultrasounds of the fetus, curbing insurance coverage and imposing expensive regulations on clinics.

    The Mississippi amendment aims to sidestep existing legal battles, simply stating that “the term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.”

    A similar measure has been defeated twice, by large margins, in Colorado. But the national campaign, promoted by Personhood USA, a Colorado-based group, found more receptive ground in Mississippi, where anti-abortion sentiment crosses party and racial lines, and where the state already has so many restrictions on abortion that only one clinic performs the procedure.

    In 2009, an ardent abortion foe named Les Riley formed a state personhood group and started collecting the signatures needed to reach the ballot. Evangelicals and other longtime abortion opponents have pressed the case, and Proposition 26 has the support of a range of political leaders. Its passage could energize similar drives brewing in Florida, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states.

    In Mississippi, the emotional battle is being fought with radio and television ads, phone banks and old-fashioned canvassing.

    Among the picnicking fans being lobbied outside the stadium in Hattiesburg on Saturday, Lauree Mooney, 40, and her husband, Jerry Mooney, 45, U.S.M. alumni, disagreed with each other. She said that she is against abortion but that the amendment is “too extreme.” Mr. Mooney said he would vote yes because “I’ve always been against abortion.”

    Shelley Shoemake, 41, a chiropractor, said the proposal is “yanking me in one direction and the other.” She knows women who had abortions as teenagers, and feels compassion for them. “I’ve got a lot of praying to do” before the vote, she said.

    Mississippi will also elect a new governor on Nov. 8. The Republican candidate, Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, is co-chairman of Yes on 26 and his campaign distributes bumper stickers for the initiative. The Democratic candidate, Johnny DuPree, the mayor of Hattiesburg and the state’s first black major-party candidate for governor in modern times, says he will vote for it though he is worried about its impact on medical care and contraception.

    No one can yet be sure of how the amendment would affect criminal proceedings, said Jonathan Will, director of the Bioethics and Health Law Center at the Mississippi College School of Law. Could a woman taking a morning-after pill be charged with murder?

    But many leaders of the anti-abortion movement fear that the strategy will be counterproductive. Federal courts would almost surely declare the amendment unconstitutional, said James Bopp Jr., a prominent conservative lawyer from Terre Haute, Ind., and general counsel of National Right to Life, since it contradicts a woman’s current right to an abortion in the early weeks of pregnancy.

    “From the standpoint of protecting unborn lives it’s utterly futile,” he said, “and it has the grave risk that if it did get to the Supreme Court, the court would write an even more extreme abortion policy.”

    Bishop Joseph Latino of Jackson, Miss., said in a statement last week that the Roman Catholic Church does not support Proposition 26 because “the push for a state amendment could ultimately harm our efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade.”

    Conservative Christian groups including the American Family Association and the Family Research Council are firmly behind the proposal.

    Dr. Randall S. Hines , a fertility specialist in Jackson working against Proposition 26 with the group Mississippians for Healthy Families, said that the amendment reflects “biological ignorance.” Most fertilized eggs, he said, do not implant in the uterus or develop further.

    “Once you recognize that the majority of fertilized eggs don’t become people, then you recognize how absurd this amendment is,” Dr. Hines said. He fears severe unintended consequences for doctors and women dealing with ectopic or other dangerous pregnancies and for in vitro fertility treatments. “We’ll be asking the Legislature, the governor, judges to decide what is best for the patient,” he said.

    Dr. Eric Webb, an obstetrician in Tupelo, Miss., who has spoken out on behalf of Proposition 26, said that the concerns about wider impacts were overblown and that the critics were “avoiding the central moral question.”

    “With the union of the egg and sperm, that is life, and genetically human,” Dr. Webb said.

    Keith Mason, president of Personhood USA, said he did not agree that the Supreme Court would necessarily reject a personhood amendment. The ultimate goal, he said, is a federal amendment, with a victory in Mississippi as the first step.

    Eric Eagan contributed reporting from Hattiesburg, Miss.
    No surprise. Christians are once again ignoring the potentially hazardous repercussions, all in the name of HERPDERPPROLIFE.

  2. #2
    But it's not a person. A person (in a non-legal sense) is an individual, where an individual is a distinct member of a group: in this case, homo sapiens.

    A fertilised egg is a non-conscious member and as such is indistinct from another of the same group... unless you compare them at the genetic level, which would mean that 'personhood' no longer requires consciousness be part of its definition.

    An upside of that would be that trees would finally be recognised as people too!

  3. #3
    Yeah, please try explain that to the Fundies.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Momo View Post
    But it's not a person. A person (in a non-legal sense) is an individual, where an individual is a distinct member of a group: in this case, homo sapiens.

    A fertilised egg is a non-conscious member and as such is indistinct from another of the same group... unless you compare them at the genetic level, which would mean that 'personhood' no longer requires consciousness be part of its definition.

    An upside of that would be that trees would finally be recognised as people too!
    No, because they would still be trees, genetically speaking.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  5. #5
    Let sleeping tigers lie Khendraja'aro's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    In the forests of the night
    Posts
    6,238
    Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
    No, because they would still be trees, genetically speaking.
    His argument aimed at "no consciousness required".
    When the stars threw down their spears
    And watered heaven with their tears:
    Did he smile his work to see?
    Did he who made the lamb make thee?

  6. #6
    Dr. Randall S. Hines , a fertility specialist in Jackson working against Proposition 26 with the group Mississippians for Healthy Families, said that the amendment reflects “biological ignorance.” Most fertilized eggs, he said, do not implant in the uterus or develop further.
    Wonder how much Mississippi cut from their Education budget, and how many science teachers were laid off?

  7. #7
    On a (somewhat) related tangent, PETA is trying a similar tactic by claiming that the 13th amendment (abolishing slavery) should also apply to whales at Seaworld.

    http://hamptonroads.com/2011/10/peta...nslaves-whales

    Maybe these groups can all get together and make the rest of us completely miserable.



    I'm not understanding why anyone would support blocking access to birth control. Don't these same people complain about welfare moms/babies? I understand the dislike of abortion itself, but one would think preventing "conception" from happening in the first place would be a good thing. Not just abstinence either; married folks use protection too (if they are smart!)

  8. #8
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Amsterdam/Istanbul
    Posts
    12,312
    Quote Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro View Post
    His argument aimed at "no consciousness required".
    And a person in a coma would then not be a person?

    I must say I find this absolutely fascinating, and I wonder if they realise what kind of side effects granting 'personhood' on a non-born has. Here in Holland we'd have to do away with the law that a still born child has to be considered never to have been alive. Must be fun to deal with the estate of a man who died in a car crash in which his pregnant wife survived but lost her baby

    I don't know about you Merkins, but overhere it matters for estate taxes if you inherit from your spouse or parents or from your children.
    Congratulations America

  9. #9
    *Groan*

    Assuming this passes, am I right that any action the State takes based on this would conflict with Roe v. Wade?

    I really don't want to see these distractions in the 2012 race...

  10. #10
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Bottom of a bottle, on top of a woman
    Posts
    3,423
    <shrug>

    Careful what you wish for... given that this is a delightfully ironic example of progressives getting what they wanted, only to find it biting them in the ass.

    Although, as delightful as the irony is, I find it hard to avoid the thought that the world would be a much better if only a lot more woman had gotten abortions...
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Hazir View Post
    And a person in a coma would then not be a person?
    This gave me pause.

    Then I realised that individualism requires at least some process of individuation. That means that someone is born and they gain experience and begin to individuate. That can be called a person. One of those that enters a coma is then a person (that has undergone individuation) in a coma.

    Someone who's not undergone any individuation (e.g. someone that's born catatonic) - their personality is not distinct from other members of the group - no evidence that distinguishes their personality from others' has yet been seen. Hence, it's impossible to identify them as individuals, in the sense of personhood. The minute they become conscious, they'd begin to individuate, and would become distinct from other members of the group.

  12. #12
    Is having one experience very different from having no experiences (afawk)?
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro View Post
    His argument aimed at "no consciousness required".
    Yes but the requirement for consciousness is just one of the legs on which personhood rests. In the reasoning in the OP they mention another, namely the human genome.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
    Is having one experience very different from having no experiences (afawk)?
    Yes.

    You have experienced or you have not.

  15. #15
    And why is that such a meaningful distinction?

    Would you grant a similar status to 1 neuron vs. 0 neurons?
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  16. #16
    The origin of the discussion was about fertilised eggs, not the development of neurons. I don't know enough about the development of the psyche in-vitro to consider it, really. But I imagine that more than 1 neuron is required for individuation.

  17. #17
    One of the best ways to determine persoonhood I've run across.

    Personhood is attained at about 22 weeks gestation:

    This argument is based on the definition of death.

    Ethicist D.A. Jones has written:

    "Death is not just another disease that can be specified, analyzed, and catalogued as viral or bacterial, infectious or auto-immune. Death is the final cessation of life. Thus defining death requires more than medical and technical expertise: It requires also some agreed understanding of what is constitutive of human life, and what it is that must be absent before the person can be said to be dead."

    "Sometimes it will be obvious to any reasonable observer that someone is dead, or alternatively, that someone is still alive. Someone who is breathing [without a respirator] and talking and walking around is obviously alive. Someone whose body is rotting away and hanging off the bones is obviously dead. However there are some cases, perhaps many cases, where it will not be obvious to an unqualified layman whether someone is alive or dead. In these cases it is the decision of competent physicians that decides the issue." 1

    Prior to about 1960, a person would be declared dead if both their heartbeat and breathing had ceased and could not be re-started. But newer technological developments made this definition invalid. Heart pacemakers can keep the heart beating indefinitely long after all other internal systems have wound down. Respirators can keep the person apparently breathing forever.

    Death is generally defined in most U.S. states as a situation in which the brain "flat-lines." That is, there is no major central nervous system activity and there is no detectable electrical activity in the brain's cerebral cortex. At this point, the person may be declared dead in many jurisdictions. The patient may appear to be breathing, as a result of the action of a respirator. Her/his heart may still be beating, either on its own or as a result of a heart pacemaker. But he/she is judged to be dead. Unplugging the patient from life support systems at this point will not actually kill the patient; she/he is already considered to be dead.

    The great rise of transplant medicine has, then, been wholly dependent upon organ harvesting from so called 'beating-heart cadavers', that is, patients who are determined to be dead on the basis of brain death criteria. 1 But their hearts continue to beat (sometimes with external help), to keep the body's organs fresh for transplanting.

    If the point of death is defined as a lack of electrical activity in the brain's cerebral cortex one might use the same criteria to define the start of human life. One might argue that fetal life becomes human person when electrical activity commences in the cerebral cortex. Human personhood, would then start when consciousness begins and ends when consciousness irrevocably ends. One could then argue that a fully-informed woman should have access to abortion at any point before the point that human personhood begins.

    According to author Richard Carrier:

    "...the fetus does not become truly neurologically active until the fifth month (an event we call 'quickening.' This activity might only be a generative one, i.e. the spontaneous nerve pulses could merely be autonomous or spontaneous reflexes aimed at stimulating and developing muscle and organ tissue. Nevertheless, it is in this month that a complex cerebral cortex, the one unique feature of human -- in contrast with animal -- brains, begins to develop, and is typically complete, though still growing, by the sixth month. What is actually going on mentally at that point is unknown, but the hardware is in place for a human mind to exist in at least a primitive state."

    When medical ethicist Bonnie Steinbock was interviewed by Newsweek and asked the question "So when does life begin?," she answered:

    "If we’re talking about life in the biological sense, eggs are alive, sperm are alive. Cancer tumors are alive. For me, what matters is this: When does it have the moral status of a human being? When does it have some kind of awareness of its surroundings? When it can feel pain, for example, because that’s one of the most brute kinds of awareness there could be. And that happens, interestingly enough, just around the time of viability. It certainly doesn’t happen with an embryo." 8

    Under this argument, some primitive neurological activity in the cerebral cortex begins during the fifth month, conceivably as early as the 22nd week of pregnancy. If we allow a two week safety factor, then society could set the gestation time limit at which abortions should not be freely available at 20 weeks. Abortions could then be requested up to the start of the 20th week for normal pregnancies, or at a later time if unusual conditions existed. Many state and provincial medical associations in North America have actually adopted this limit, probably using a different rationale.
    I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
    I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
    Which is what I am

    I aim at the stars
    But sometimes I hit London

  18. #18
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Amsterdam/Istanbul
    Posts
    12,312
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    *Groan*

    Assuming this passes, am I right that any action the State takes based on this would conflict with Roe v. Wade?

    I really don't want to see these distractions in the 2012 race...
    Well, there is of course this little problem that if this personhood gets traction then Roe v. Wade could loose its relevance since the question is no longer if the woman has the discretion to decide freely of what to do with her body, but if she is entitled to end the life of another person (I think the answer would be no).

    The people who try to get this passed don't seem to understand that the can of worms they are opening is about the size of Pandora's box.
    Congratulations America

  19. #19
    This would just be at the level of the state constitution for this one state. Our federal constitution would possibly override this if lawyers could argue it intruded into federally-protected private decisions around sexual health.

  20. #20
    Not to mention the hideous amount of legal fees that would be spent contesting/defending this in courts. Mississippi would rather spend money on that, than funding their public schools, science teachers, sex-ed programs, school lunches, or birth control for low income women?

  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by GGT View Post
    Mississippi would rather spend money on that, than funding their public schools, science teachers, sex-ed programs, school lunches, or birth control for low income women?

  22. #22
    Mississippi has high teen pregnancy rates, high numbers of poverty, low ratings for public education success, plenty of HS drop-outs, and only ONE clinic that offers abortion services. On par with Kansas.

    Seems the state's legislators don't understand the female reproductive system, or how traditional birth control methods work. If they do, they're blatantly ignoring science, or want to re-define science using their personal religious criteria.

    [Similar to what was done in Dover, PA and teaching Creationism (in my own backyard) before it was overturned by the courts.]

    These people are among The Crazies that shouldn't be deciding public policy of any kind.

  23. #23
    Great strip there, Norton. Can't wait to see what they do with Kansas + Mississippi. Or anything south of the Kansas navel.

  24. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by GGT View Post
    Seems the state's legislators don't understand the female reproductive system, or how traditional birth control methods work. If they do, they're blatantly ignoring science, or want to re-define science using their personal religious criteria.
    The only thing these batshit nut-fucks understand is that these children need Jesus.

  25. #25
    I believe it's really more of an ethical issue than a strictly scientific issue. Some may choose to resolve the ethical issue with some degree of scientific examination, but ethics questions aren't always the same as science questions.

  26. #26
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Bottom of a bottle, on top of a woman
    Posts
    3,423
    Quote Originally Posted by GGT View Post
    These people are among The Crazies that shouldn't be deciding public policy of any kind.
    Takes one to know one, or something?

    What's with you the past few days, making statements that cut deeper against you than anything else? I think I liked it better when it was j00s, j00s, j00s every post.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  27. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    I believe it's really more of an ethical issue than a strictly scientific issue. Some may choose to resolve the ethical issue with some degree of scientific examination, but ethics questions aren't always the same as science questions.
    The suggestion then that ethics could override science, even to the point of "hazardous repercussions" is alarming, and sadly something that happens enough as is.
    "In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."

  28. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    I believe it's really more of an ethical issue than a strictly scientific issue. Some may choose to resolve the ethical issue with some degree of scientific examination, but ethics questions aren't always the same as science questions.
    Whether or not it's okay to kill a person is a moral/ethical/legal question. Whether or not an entity is a person is a question that should ideally be approached from a scientific and rational philosophical angle. The alternative is to approach it from a religious and or nonscientific/irrational angle that would lead the state to enforce religious beliefs and possibly also open up to problems such as dead people who can't be declared dead, tomatoes and donated livers being granted personhood, etc. Those would be problems not merely because they lie on a slippery slope, but because they're frickin' absurd

    The debate here is about personhood. If the arguments in favour of granting personhood to an embryo touch on matters of rational enquiry (as they should, unless someone wants to enforce religious beliefs) then that's how they must be tackled. You can't dodge science by saying it's a matter of ethics, esp. when you actually mean that it's a matter of religious beliefs (for some).
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  29. #29
    Who said anything about dodging science? Most respectable scientists wouldn't make a determination on this and call the issue resolved.

    People will inevitably take whatever information biologists can find on development and ultimately make an ethical decision. Is X of neural activity enough to constitute "life"? Does the presence of Y or Z constitute "life"?

    But biology can only go so far. If things were any more clear cut, there wouldn't be a debate about this. Even if you're just looking at the science and not a religious person, the actual determination of where life begins basically boils-down to a moral and ethical decision based on the facts you've observed (with some subjectivity in the mix).
    Last edited by Dreadnaught; 10-30-2011 at 12:57 AM.

  30. #30
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Bottom of a bottle, on top of a woman
    Posts
    3,423
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    The suggestion then that ethics could override science,
    The suggestion that science can answer a question that is fundamentally non-scientific is retarded, crazy and irrational.

    So, congrats on being crazier, dumber and more irrational than the religious fundies you think you're mocking. Quite a feat; your parents must be very proud.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •