Mississippi Personhood Amendment

[kyrielle]

Originally posted by twbasketcase at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting very little no attention in the mainstream media.

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.

Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.

Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.

What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.

If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.

What to do?

- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.

- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.

- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.

- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.

Comments

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

As with most political kerfuffles, this is all about jockeying for public relations and not about issues.

First, there's no way this could be used to challenge Roe. Just because people say it could be doesn't make it so. Whenever I've asked, "under what theory?", the answers I get back are piddling and incoherent. Usually it's "because the State is saying a fetus is a person and it'll be considered murder to abort a fetus!", which is ... well ... a bunch of crap. Okay, fine, for the Legislature's purposes it's a person: but murder is the unlawful killing of a person. SCOTUS has declared abortion to be legal nationwide: therefore, abortion can't be murder. Even if this (brain-dead) amendment passes, abortion will still be legal because this amendment cannot make abortion criminal.

Likewise, it can't ban "most forms of birth control." Again, SCOTUS to the rescue in the form of Griswold. Americans have a Constitutional right to birth control. Any state amendment that claims otherwise is null and void. If the state were to try to ban birth control based on this amendment, it would get thrown out on summary judgment from the first federal judge who heard it. "You're banning birth control? Griswold. GTFO. *gavelslam*"

And "women who miscarry will be subject to criminal investigation"? Miscarriage is a horrible tragedy, and sometimes it has its roots in awful crimes (domestic violence, rampant drug abuse while pregnant, etc.). Already, today, right now, if the doctor thinks there's a good chance the miscarriage was the result of a crime, they have to report it to the police. Nothing changes if this amendment gets passed: doctors will still be reporting to the police if they think the miscarriage was the result of a crime. They will be using their best medical judgment to decide which miscarriages are naturally-occurring tragedies and which ones need criminal investigation -- exactly as it is now.

I mean, I could go on, but ... gah.

And don't get me started about how stupid this amendment is in the first place. It achieves nothing, it accomplishes nothing. It's political posturing whose only possible intent is to send the Left into paroxysms. Which it's doing quite contemptibly well, I think.

tl;dr version: the amendment is stupid beyond belief, and the reaction to it is pretty much the same.

[kyrielle]

I admit, I don't see how they can down Roe v. Wade with it. However, I do see it creating all sorts of thorny problems in the case of miscarriages caused by carelessness or negligence on the part of the mother. Which are, frankly, still horrible tragedies...but which seem like they could be viewed, if the fetus is a person, as negligent homicide.... Whereas, now, being pregnant and getting drunk (so long as you don't then do anything else like drive, obviously) is not a crime.

And if they can reduce birth control forms available, that reduces choice and options; in some cases, for some women, perhaps to the point where they can't get any they can safely and healthily use.

There's also the chilling effect it will have on people by existing...why take the risk of doing anything that might go against it, if you can't afford the court time / costs / strain? Even if it is eventually struck down, people pay to get there in stress, sorrow, pain, time, and money. Which they may not, in fact, have enough of to fight the fight.