For weeks, anti-abortion advocates and the religious right have poured millions into a campaign to give voters the power to give personhood to a fertilized egg.
Giving personhood to a fertilized egg would, in effect, grant full legal rights to said egg. Any egg fertilization not leading to a live birth could be criminally investigated and prosecuted. This would, of course, outlaw abortion. If you dig deeper, this would have outlawed any type of barrier between fertilization of an egg and implantation into the uterus (such as any hormonal birth control); any barrier between implantation and live birth; allowed a criminal investigation of any miscarriage, health of mother or rape exemption, and more. The state would no longer allow you to take a birth control pill, utilize IVF, have an abortion, or abort an ectopic pregnancy or severly disabled fetus.
On Tuesday, the proposition failed, 58-42. That's sixteen points. That's huge. After all, this is abstinence only Mississippi, folks - not New York City.
If this doesn't send a message to anti-abortion groups, I don't know what will.
In reality, the key to defeating this bill was simple. Every woman in Mississippi just need turn to her man and say, "Sorry, darlin', but we are just gonna have to practice that abstinence from here on out; I can't risk another baby."
Proposition defeated.
Giving personhood to a fertilized egg would, in effect, grant full legal rights to said egg. Any egg fertilization not leading to a live birth could be criminally investigated and prosecuted. This would, of course, outlaw abortion. If you dig deeper, this would have outlawed any type of barrier between fertilization of an egg and implantation into the uterus (such as any hormonal birth control); any barrier between implantation and live birth; allowed a criminal investigation of any miscarriage, health of mother or rape exemption, and more. The state would no longer allow you to take a birth control pill, utilize IVF, have an abortion, or abort an ectopic pregnancy or severly disabled fetus.
On Tuesday, the proposition failed, 58-42. That's sixteen points. That's huge. After all, this is abstinence only Mississippi, folks - not New York City.
If this doesn't send a message to anti-abortion groups, I don't know what will.
In reality, the key to defeating this bill was simple. Every woman in Mississippi just need turn to her man and say, "Sorry, darlin', but we are just gonna have to practice that abstinence from here on out; I can't risk another baby."
Proposition defeated.
"Contrary to the almost universally received doctrine, a few theologians held erroneously that the natural law depends not on the essential necessary will of God, but upon His arbitrary positive will, and taught consistently with this view, that the natural law may be dispensed from or even abrogated by God. The conception, however, that the moral law is but an arbitrary enactment of the Creator, involves the denial of any absolute distinction between right and wrong—a denial which, of course, sweeps away the very foundation of the entire moral order."
- St. Thomas Aquinas -
I guess the bottom line here is that God is not an arbitrary entity. Our sense of natural law should guide us in our pursuit to understand the 'will of God'. Something fanatical anti-abortionists obviously do not do in their quest to follow God. Perhaps, they have no clue.
I heard an interview with some of the Mississippi people who supported the personhood bill.
Very scarey.