Posted on 09/27/2009 9:26:38 PM PDT by Steelfish
A new push to define 'person,' and to outlaw abortion in the process Some abortion foes think the rationale for Roe vs. Wade is vulnerable. They're trying to amend state constitutions -- including California's -- to define personhood from conception.
By Robin Abcarian September 28, 2009
It is one of the enduring questions of religion and science, and lately of American politics: When does a fertilized egg become a person?
Abortion foes, tired of a profusion of laws that limit but do not abolish abortion, are trying to answer the question in a way that they hope could put an end to legalized abortion.
Across the country, they have revived efforts to amend state constitutions to declare that personhood -- and all rights accorded human beings -- begins at conception.
From Florida to California, abortion foes are gathering signatures, pressing state legislators, and raising money to put personhood measures on ballots next year. In Louisiana, a class at a Catholic high school is lobbying state legislators as part of a civics exercise.
"We have big and small efforts going on in 30 states right now," said Keith Mason, co-founder of Colorado-based Personhood USA. "Our goal is to activate the population."
Critics deride the effort as the "egg-as-person" movement and say it threatens in vitro fertilization; some kinds of birth control, including IUDs and pills; and stem cell research. They say that Americans will reject it as a government intrusion into their privacy.
"It's a back-door abortion ban," said Ted Miller, spokesman for NARAL Pro-Choice America, which has worked with Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups to defeat such measures.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Since most children are aborted naturally, that means that each potential aborted child will require a complete funeral, complete with payments to the funeral director...
To the question of person-hood and when does it begin, it seems to me the right thing is to give the benefit of the doubt to the possibility of person-hood at conception.
???
You said: “Since most children are aborted naturally,...”
Do you really believe that there are more spontaneous abortions than births?
I think that you are way off.
An average woman can have 15 in her life time.....that is average. Now a woman with fertility problems.....a lot higher.
do you have any sources for such a claim???
Personhood! WooHoo!
Keep your anti-life propaganda to the websites that won't recognize it for the LIE you and your ilk try to present it to be. The *choice* you SCREAM at us is simply the decision the MURDERESS makes to SPREAD HER LEGS. There is nothing else.
I am 99.9% sure that Arkansas has in fact done this, not in their legislature, but in their court system. It seems to me that whatever the courts say is the law, so why doesn't this count?
Here is the URL: www.nrlc.org/news/2001/NRL06/arkansas.html
I don’t think she’s talking about miscarriages. I recall, from various biology classes along the way, that a number of eggs get fertilized, but are incapable of developing much beyond that step. Many would not implant in the uterine lining; others might implant, but end up being miscarried without the mother ever knowing she was pregnant. I do not believe there is really any way of knowing how often those events occur.
If personhood begins at conception, then many people are aborted naturally.
Prospective studies using very sensitive early pregnancy tests have found that 25% of pregnancies are miscarried by the sixth week of the woman's Last Menstrual Period.
And it gets much worse for older adults trying to conceive. Should older married couples be prohibited from having sex because they're likely to create a fertilized egg that will be spontaneously aborted?
How about working harder to understand what it is that makes a person a person?
A natural miscarriage (termed “NATURAL ABORTION” by some) is most emphatically NOT in the same category as a human caused artificial TERMINATION of a life, simply because it is inconvenient to the woman entrusted by its presence.
Choose LIFE! Your own MOTHER DID!
To throw the CANARD about older couples simply demonstrates how utterly bereft of logic, reason, and simple human compassion the anti-life folk are.
No. That is an accurate statement.
Most pregnancies end in spontaneous abortions very early in the pregnancy, usually during the first twelve weeks. It is called a miscarriage when it occours after a certain number of weeks when a woman realizes she is pregnant, I can’t remember exactly the number. Many women think they’ve just missed a ‘period’, but they’ve actually had a spontaneious abortion.
This is not unusual. It happens frequently among cattle and horses, too.
I remember reading that fact, oh, thirty-five or so years ago.
I think the term is spontaneous abortion. When a fertilized egg does not implant in the walls of the uterus, what happens to it?
Implantation occurs only 25% of the time.
Those are the facts. Deal with it.
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