Pro-26's Illogical (and Disturbing) Claims

Recently, I noticed a comment on the Yes on 26 Campaign's Facebook page. After a discussion about why Initiative 26 doesn't make any exceptions for victims of rape or incest, one commenter wrote this:


A child conceived by rape, was probly [sic] meant to happen because hundreds if not thousands of healthy married couples can't conceive a child. Also you have good evidence to prosecute the rapist.


This comment is terrifying to me. According to the commenter, rape is simply one way to provide the world with more children for adoption.... Seriously?!?! For one thing, there are plenty of children in the world waiting to be adopted, and plenty more who are alone or neglected, uncared for and impoverished. Does any suggest finding better homes for these children? No, of course not. 


Also, the comment above seems to suggest that rapes are fated to happen in order to create these children. Again, I must ask....Seriously? For one thing, he (the commenter was a male) is completely taking the blame off of the rapist. If it was his fate to rape and impregnate a woman, how can you blame him right? Wrong. A rape is a violent crime committed against another human being. It is not fate; it is not God's plan. It is simply one person taking away the rights and safety of another in order to achieve power, dominance, etc. It is not God's round-about way of putting another child on this planet.


It also bothers me that the commenter assumes that the existence of a child will inevitably lead to prosecuting a rapist. Even getting a rape accusation to be taken seriously, investigated, and to result in an arrest is an immensely difficult task that doesn't happen very often. Just because there's a child with half of the rapist's DNA doesn't mean it will lead to a conviction (or even an arrest). Perhaps the commenter has been watching too much Law and Order: SVU.


I think this comment also reveals how a large majority of our society still views rape. This commenter is not concerned at all with the rape victim. He doesn't mention her. He doesn't mention the pain this rape caused her, and the additional pain that a pregnancy would cause. This is what bothers me most about the "Why abort when you can just put up for adoption?" argument against abortion. Pregnancy is extremely difficult. Nine months is a long time. Pregnancy and child-bearing result in time off from work, unpaid leave, physical and emotional roller-coasters, and much more. Now add all that as the aftermath of a rape. Add all that onto the emotional and physical struggle to recover from being raped. Even if you know you're going to put this child up for adoption, that doesn't make the duration of pregnancy and the difficulty of childbirth any easier (in fact, I would imagine it might be harder; you know this is a child you don't want, and you are simply incubating). But, when people argue for adoption vs. abortion, they aren't even considering the toll this would take on the rape victim (or just the woman with an unwanted pregnancy).  Because, in many people's minds, even today, the rape victim is somehow to blame: she was too drunk, she was wearing something slutty, she has had sex with too many men, she should have known better than to be in that bar/frat house/dark street. And the fact that so many people still think this way, and use these inaccurate stereotypes of rape victims to make a case for extreme, far-reaching legislation, is what terrifies me the most.

Debunking Pro-26 Arguments

When people argue for Initiative 26, they tend to use some of the same arguments (lies) (misconceptions). There's the abortion is bad/abortion is murder argument. This one is hard to fight. I personally don't believe abortion is murder. Yes, I think if someone were to choose to have an abortion at 8 months, that's crossing a line. But, unlike many pro-life activists want you to believe, these late-term abortions do not happen. Elective abortions are usually happening pre-viability, or before 22 weeks into the pregnancy. I'm so tired of pro-life arguments that ignore the facts. And they have to ignore the facts if they want to sway moderate voters; they have to tug on your heartstrings, and tell you that babies about to be born are being murdered, and hope that you know so little about abortion and/or pregnancy that you will believe them. And most people don't know much about abortion or pregnancy (especially, it seems, the people making the laws: see Rachel Maddow's clip, about Mitt Romney's lack of pregnancy knowledge, here [bonus: there are pictures of Oxford's very own Save the Pill Rally]).

Another argument, along the same lines as the first, and often used by the same people, is that criminalizing abortion will reduce the number of abortions. This is not true! As I've noted in previous posts, this personhood amendment, if passed, would make many forms of hormonal birth control illegal. And, as Jack Balkin writes in What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said: The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Most Controversial Decision, "Contraception is key to reducing abortion rates: 47 percent of the 6.3 million unplanned pregnancies that occur each year in the United States occur among the 7 percent of women who do not practice contraception." Did you get that, pro-lifers? Almost half of unplanned pregnancies come from only 7 percent of women, those women who do not have knowledge about, money for, or access to birth control. So, clearly, the best way to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies (thereby, I would assume, reducing the number of abortions) is to make birth control harder to come by, with fewer varieties. Oh wait. No that's exactly the opposite of what we need to do. If we want that 7 percent of women who don't or can't use contraception to stop contributing to half of America's unplanned pregnancies, then they need health care. They need access to regular birth control, as well as emergency contraception options. And they need their civil rights as human beings, as women, and as American citizens to protect them both when they are, and when they are not, pregnant.

No matter personal opinions on abortion; this initiative simply does not make legal sense. It's bad legislation, and it's dangerous. As I've said before, giving all the rights afforded a person to a fetus makes no sense; they simply have no need for those rights, because fetuses are simply not capable of the same actions and thoughts as a person. This argument that Initiative 26 is trying to make, the argument that personhood should begin at conception, came up in the trial for Roe, and was addressed even then, almost forty years ago. Justice Blackmun, the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the opinion in Roe, specifically dealt with this. Balkin writes, "Blackmun responded that the fetus was not a person within the meaning of the Constitution, pointing out that in many places the Constitution referred to the rights and duties of persons that would make no sense if applied to fetuses."

Vote No on 26: Bishop Gray's Statement

The Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi issued a statement today, expressing his concern over the personhood amendment and declaring that he does not support the initiative. Here is the statement:

My dear friends,

My deep reservations about abortion and the death penalty grow out of my abiding belief in the sanctity of human life and the arbitrary nature of these actions. I am not, however, a pacifist in regards to war. I do believe that some very serious moral decisions are not simply choices between good and evil, but rather in the case of two evils, choices between the lesser of two evils. Such is the complexity of human moral decision-making in a fallen world.

I appreciate the intentions of those who have supported Proposition 26, what has been called the Personhood Amendment. I share their passion for the sanctity of human life. However, I am gravely concerned about the unintended consequences of this legislation. The moral nightmares of doctors no longer able to give preference to saving the life of the mother in such cases as an ectopic pregnancy and the uncertain impact on in-vitro fertilization are real. Thus, the Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Medical Association has announced that it cannot support this legislation.

The legal nightmares arising from this legislation are also very real. The word “person” is used over 9,400 times in the Mississippi Annotated Code and the implications for mass confusion and decades of legal challenges over every use of the term are staggering.

For their own reasons, Roman Catholic bishops in several states, including Mississippi, have said they could not support this particular legislation.

While I recognize the complexities of such moral decisions and the need for each of us to make our own informed and prayerful choices, you need to know that I share the aforementioned concerns about the unintended consequences of this legislation. Thus, I cannot support Proposition 26 on the November 8th ballot in Mississippi.

Please feel free to share this letter with whomever you wish.

Faithfully,

The Rt. Rev. Duncan M. Gray, III

Thank you Bishop Gray! We need more religious/political/community leaders speaking out against personhood and speaking up for women's rights!

Also, if you are in the Oxford area today, there's a rally on the Courthouse Lawn from 5-7. Come show your support for women and children everywhere!

Vote No on 26!

Weaponry or Weddings: Sexism in Magazines

I'm going to go back to my usual cultural + things I notice + feminism = a blog post formula. I'm not done advocating for personhood and the Nov. 8 vote, but I don't have much new to say tonight. Keep checking here, as well as the blog for Parents Against MS 26 and the site for Mississippians for Healthy Families, for info on the personhood initiative (and check out the video that got picked up by Rachel Maddow's blog).

So I have become obsessed with all things magazines lately. I was looking at this website I discovered, which offers reduced-price magazine subscriptions. It seems kinda sketchy, and now that I work for a publishing company, I couldn't live with myself if I purchased a subscription from anywhere but the publisher's direct website, but it is a good way to browse through categories of magazines.

Here are some of the categories:

Lifestyle

Business & Finance

Men's

Teen

Animals & Pets

Women's

...and plenty more. But of course, my eye was immediately grabbed by the "women's" category. So I clicked on it to see the subcategories, which were as follows:

Bridal & Weddings (7)

Home & Cooking (57)

Pregnancy & Family (14)

Women's Health (27)

Women's Interests (78)

Fashion & Beauty (23)

The biggest category is Women's Interests, which is, of course, also the vaguest. Clicking on it led to a huge assortment of magazines. I noticed one feminist magazine right off the bat, Bust, and there may have been more; I don't claim to know all the titles for feminist publications. But many of the magazines in this category still had standard "feminine" cover pictures: pictures of celebrities, candles looking very homey, knitting patterns, and a baby. I noticed one magazine for working women (Professional Woman's Magazine) and at least one for exercise (Runners). But by and large, women's interests still seems to center around home decorating, cooking, and looking good.

And the "men's" category is no less stereotypical. Its subcategories are as follows:

Auto (105) 

Men's Fitness (13)

Men's Interests (39)

Outdoor (84)

Sports & Athletics (51)

Weaponry (18)

These categories crack me up. Weaponry? Tons of magazines with big guns on the covers.

It's amazing to me that in 2011 our magazines are still so gendered. If a woman with an interest in cars is looking for a new magazine, she has to know to click on "men's" in order to get there (which she probably will know to do, having been raised in our gender-segregated culture). And a man with an interest in cooking will have to find his magazines through the "women's" link. 

I know that a lot of today's magazines have been around for years, when these gendered divisions were even more pronounced in culture. But I still think it's time to branch out. After all, out of the subcategories for women's magazines, I would only click on two (health and interests), and still may not find a magazine that interests me. And I know plenty of men who find nothing of interest in any of the male categories. Yet companies, magazines, businesses, etc., continue to market products exclusively to one gender or the other (like Dr. Pepper's new "manly" campaign). 

Is this really helping products to sell when advertisers are excluding about half of the money-spending public?

Parents Against MS 26 Video

This will be a short post. Parents Against MS 26 have created a video to discuss the potential consequences of Initiative 26. Watch this video and share it with everyone you know!

The Need to Vote, Part II

I want to take at least one post to step away from personhood and discuss some of the other issues that could come up on Nov. 8.

First, along with Initiative 26, Initiative 27 will be appearing on the ballots this November. Init. 27 aims to require voters to present picture ID in order to vote. Wait, doesn't that kind of sound like the past practices of grandfather clauses, literacy tests and poll taxes that aimed to keep African-Americans from voting? Why, yes it does! The truth is that many people don't have up-to-date photo ID. For one thing, if you don't have the money for a car, is getting and keeping a current driver's license a top priority? Probably not. This bill is aimed to keep low-income people from the polls. And it could also keep women in general away from the polls. According to a post on Ms. magazine's blog, "as many as 32 million women of voting age don't have documentation with their current legal name." If you changed your name at marriage, you may not be eligible to vote! (You know, I was already thinking that if/when I get married, I would keep my last name because, let's face it, Genie doesn't sound good with any other names. But if this passes, it looks like I'll have another reason.)

Also, if you haven't already heard, the House of Representatives passed HR 358 this week. If you don't know what that is, I suggest reading this article (again, from Ms.) to get full details, but basically, it says that hospitals can refuse emergency treatment to pregnant women if they have a moral problem with it. So, if a pregnant woman comes into the hospital with an ectopic pregnancy, (a life-threatening situation when not treated, and also a situation that almost never leads to a viable pregnancy) the hospital can refuse to give her the medically necessary pregnancy termination that she needs. Not surprisingly, this has been dubbed the "Let Women Die Act." Supporters of it are calling the "Protect Life Act," though how it protects any life at all is unclear to me.

Now, it's unlikely that this bill will pass in the Senate, and if it does, President Obama has vowed to veto it. So the question is, why is it being dealt with at all? Why are legislators focusing on bills that won't become law when they could be making strides towards alleviating the economic and jobs crisis at hand? And why are legislators waging a war against women and their rights to health insurance and health care decisions?

We need to step up and vote for legislators who represent our interests. I'll be the first one to admit that I'm not usually politically active and I rarely do much research on candidates. But that time is over. We need to step up, find out who's running and what their platforms are, and vote. Here in MS, we're voting for a new governor on Nov. 8. Find out about the candidates, find out what they stand for. It's time to vote. Vote for women. Vote for jobs. As Kathy Spillar at Ms. said, "Vote like your life depends on it. Because it does."

Legal Personhood vs. Life

Today, I would like to discuss the difference between deciding (or believing) that life begins at conception and deciding (or believing) that legal personhood should begin at conception. This idea was brought up at a meeting I attended recently and I think it's a great way to look at and think about Initiative 26 in Mississippi.

I attended a meeting last week to hear a representative of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women speak. She discussed several important problems with Initiative 26, and then facilitated a question and answer/brainstorming about what to do next session. And someone else at the meeting mentioned this idea, the difference between when life begins and when legal personhood begins (I would credit her if I knew her name!). Basically, no one in the medical/scientific fields can reach a decision on when life begins (though the general definition for pregnancy is when the fertilized egg has implanted and not when the egg is fertilized). So if we can’t decide when life begins, how are we to decide when legal personhood begins?

David McCarty has written a great piece on the personhood amendment and what it will actually do. He makes direct reference to Mississippi’s Bill of Rights and many of the times that the word person is used. His point is that is eggs, blastocysts, zygotes and fetuses are legally persons, then all these person references will now apply to them. He then writes out many of these rights, including the phrase “including zygotes and fetuses” to point out how ridiculous it is. One example is this:

The right of every citizen, including zygotes and fetuses, to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person, or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but the legislature may regulate or forbid carrying concealed weapons. 

Now, if you read all the comments on this page, there are people crying out for McCarty to stop discussing the ridiculous aspect of the initiative. One commenter, who wrote in several times, said,

The bottom line is that if you support legalized abortion you either don't believe a zygote/embryo/fetus is in actuality (not just the legal sense) a person, or you just don't care that abortion causes the death of a person. In that case, I probably won't change your mind about opposing prop 26. I'll be the first to admit there are going to be more legal consequences than just abortion if somehow this were passed and it survived judicial scrutiny (which it won't). By all means, if you don't believe life begins at fertilization, vote no. But don't oppose the initiative because you are afraid of giving fetuses the right to bear arms.

He wrote this comment after saying that the legal consequences of Initiative 26 are just not as bad as we Vote No-ers are making it out to be and then being proven wrong by other commenters, including Atlee Parks Breland of Parents Against 26. What bothers me is the last sentence of his comment, because it entirely misses the point of McCarty’s piece. McCarty doesn’t oppose the initiative because he’s afraid of giving fetuses the right to bear arms. I’m pretty sure that, while if this passes fetuses will technically have that right, none of us are very worried about how they will choose to exercise that right. (Pregnant women swallowing guns for their fetuses? I doubt it.) The point is that if we vote to make fertilized eggs legal persons, we are endowing them with way more rights than they can or should have. A bundle of cells inside another human being should not have the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government. They can’t do it, physically, emotionally or mentally, so why should we be worried about their right to do so? And of course, I know that the pro-26-ers are not worried about that right; they are worried about the “right to life” (a phrase I hate, since I am very much pro-lives and against 26) and making abortion illegal. But this initiative goes too far. That is the point of McCarty’s piece. When we are endowing rights upon creatures who are not capable of exercising them, there is a problem.

As I’ve written before, the slavery comparison keeps coming up. But Allison Korn of the NAPW made an excellent point when she spoke last week. When we gave slaves the full rights of “persons” in this country, we simply gave them rights. We did not take away rights from anyone else; those rights didn’t come at anyone’s expense. We simply expanded the legal definition of a person. But this bill is different. This bill would be expanding the definition of a person at the direct expense of women. Women would lose their rights to decisions about their bodies and their families.

This bill is not pro-life or pro-lives. Pro-lives would mean taking care of the children we have. Pro-lives means dealing with problems like inaccessible health care, high infant mortality rates, high teen pregnancy rates and high child impoverishment. If Mississippi were truly pro-lives, we would be handling those problems. By illegalizing abortion and taking rights away from women, all of these problems will get worse. That is not a pro-lives, pro-Mississippi or pro-women solution.

The Personhood Amendment: Important Resources for Fighting Back

So, I've been pretty busy this week, changing up my work schedule and having to drive to Meridian tomorrow, so in the meantime I just wanted to provide y'all with articles and resources for the fight against the personhood amendment. Some you may have already seen, some maybe not, but all are worth checking out.

Also, if you're in the Oxford area, there is a fundraiser at Two Stick for Parents Against 26 and Mississippians for Healthy Families, with music and a raffle. Come show your support for MS families and vote no!

Facebook Groups (that I'm aware of) Against Personhood:
Mississippians Against Personhood Amendment
Vote No on Mississippi Amendment 26!
Ole Miss Rebels Against 26

Organizations Against Personhood:
Parents Against MS 26 (and here is their Facebook page)
Mississippians For Healthy Families (and Facebook) (and follow on Twitter @MS4HealthyFams)
National Advocates for Pregnant Women
The National Fertility Association's site for the personhood amendment
The MS Chapter of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (this is a letter to all MS members for the Executive Committee)

Well-written Articles Against Personhood:
Life and Law: The Commitment to Pre-Embryonic Personhood by Jonathan Will, Mississippi College professor of law, The Mississippi Business Journal
Don't Make Your Morals Our Laws by Martha Simmons, The Clarion-Ledger
Ban Birth Control? They Wouldn't Dare by Katha Pollit, The Nation
The Facts About Amendment 26 by Lexi Thoman, The Daily Mississippian
A Letter from the MSMA President by Thomas E. Joiner, M.D., president of the Mississippi State Medical Association
Pregnant Women who lose babies face murder charges by Ed Pilkington, The Guardian
MS Representative John Mayo's statement against personhood

Blogs Against 26 (there would be some overlap, since Parents against 26 has a blog but is also an established organization, so this is really just blogs that are discussing MS personhood on a regular-ish basis, and may be added to as I find more):
Deep-Fried Freethinkers

To Know What We're Up Against:
The actual personhood initiative
Freda Bush's pro 26 article in The Clarion-Ledger
Personhood USA's website

These are just the ones I've taken the time to bookmark; I know I've seen and read more. Feel free to provide more links to sites, articles and blogs in the comments.

The Need to Vote

"Nearly 19 million young women between the ages of 18 and 34 didn't vote in the 2000 election, a number nearly equivalent to 20 percent of all Americans who actually voted for a presidential candidate."

This is the first sentence in the foreword to Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner's book The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy. The book, which I have not quite completed, goes on to discuss the millions of reasons why women should vote.

As it stands now, young women (and men too) do not vote. Since they do not bring big numbers to the voting booths, politicians don't cater to them with their campaigns and platforms. 

But if we were voting, if that 19 million young women went out on Nov. 8 and cast a vote, think of the changes that could happen! If we were creating a consistent, voting demographic, politicians would have to start paying attention to what we want from them. 

Women's issues are rarely the hot topics of political discussion (except for abortion, and that topic seems to often be argued by men). Rarely do we hear the wage gap, the second shift, or the lack of family leave policies discussed on the nightly news (if we're even watching the news to begin with). But if these issues aren't being dealt with, if women continue to keep their voices and opinions out of the arena, then political decisions will continue to be made by men with men's interests in mind.

The personhood amendment is just one example of policy being made without young people's input or interests. Based on what I've seen and heard in the past few weeks, most young people are against the personhood amendment, regardless of their stance on abortion. Most young people today are aware of, and a part of in one way or another, a sexually-active-before-marriage culture, and understand the threats to birth control and contraceptives that the personhood amendment makes. But, I wonder, how many of these young people will actually make it to their voting location on November 8? 

If we want to make true feminist changes in this country, young women and men have to start voting. Consistently. This means we also have to start paying attention to laws being passed, candidates running for office, opinions of different politicians, and much more. We have to truly think about what we want out of life, the best ways to meet those needs, and the politicians who are working toward those goals. 

If we want feminism (and women) to be successful, we have to step up and add numbers to the voter turnout. Every election.

And we can start with voting no for the personhood amendment on November 8.



**For more reading on this topic, I recommend The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy: Women, Politics and the Future by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner.

The Personhood Movement and Anti-Choice Scare Tactics

The activists working for the personhood movement are trying to take away women’s rights. When women lose their reproductive rights, they lose the right to a life, plain and simple. The right to a career, the right to timing and spacing their children as they desire, the right to put off childbearing, as well as their rights to health care. So why would anyone want to vote for this?

Well, the personhood movement is disguising their main agenda. They are making Amendment 26 all about abortion. Do you think abortion is murder? Vote for Amendment 26! Do you think abortion is morally wrong? Vote for Amendment 26! Do you think women should maybe have the right to choose even though you personally find abortion a little unsettling or disturbing? Vote for Amendment 26! Instead of discussing how the amendment could affect all reproductive rights, they use racial messages, slavery images and religious overtones to condemn abortion, over and over. Abortion is a sticky issue and everyone knows it; so if they make this amendment all about abortion, they can swing moderate voters who may be unsure of their stance.

I recently visited the Personhood Movement’s website. They encourage personhood activists to “use the term point of creation instead of conception, or even fertilization.” They are intentionally invoking religious language to scare religious voters. Creation reminds us of God, and God doesn’t like abortion right?

For one thing, this is clearly crossing the line that should separate church and state (but politicians have been doing this for decades in order to fight against abortion, as well as other controversial issues, so I’m not exactly surprised). They are intentionally invoking religion instead of science, which is where the debate should be held. Scientists may not agree when life begins, or how to define life, but surely God can, right?

They also refer to fetuses as slaves. When Colorado faced a similar personhood vote, this ad was used in the campaign:

I’m George Stevens and I’m a person. I was held as property as a child. Even before my birth I was called a slave in an America you wouldn’t recognize...But today in Colorado, there are still people called property – children – just like I was. And that America you thought you wouldn’t recognize is all around you and these children are being killed.  This November, vote “yes” on Amendment 62. Amendment 62 declares unborn children persons, not property. And that’s the America I fought for. So visit PersonhoodColorado.com and in November, vote “yes” on 62. It’s the right thing to do.

People in Mississippi are now using the exact same argument to get Amendment 26 passed. They are comparing fetuses, zygotes, and eggs to slaves. Freda M. Bush, at the Clarion Ledger, writes,

In our federal Constitution, my ancestors, who were brought to the United States as slaves, were recognized as 3/5 of a human person for voting representation. It was a great civil rights victory when the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, acknowledging the African American as a "whole" person, deserving the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The great civil rights injustice of our day is being levied against our innocent, unborn children. In the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, unborn human beings are not recognized as even 3/5 of a person, and can be killed at any stage of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever. Initiative 26 recognizes what we all know intuitively, scientifically and spiritually - that we are persons from the moment of our biologic beginnings, endowed by our Creator with the same inalienable rights.

Let's ignore for the moment that Dr. Bush's comment about abortions happening "at any stage of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever" is completely false, and stick to the slavery comparison. This analogy is ridiculous. Fetuses inside a womb cannot be compared to African slaves. Fertilized eggs cannot be compared to slaves. They are not individuals with thoughts, hopes or goals. And no matter what your definition of “life” is or when you feel it begins, it cannot be argued that pregnant women are like slave masters. In fact, if the amendment passes, women will be the slaves. They will be slaves to the government that is making the decisions for them, and to the unwanted children whose rights are being held as superior to their own.   

The Personhood website also mentions the Holocaust (another touchy subject). The site reads,

50 million children have died as a result of legalized abortion in the United States. There is no visible monument to their passing. No pictures of death and destruction to prick our consciences and bring these dark deeds into the light.

So, now women are the same as Nazis? Let’s remember, the Nazis were wiping out an entire race of people in order to create a superior race, and rid the world of what they saw as the “wrong” type of people. This is nothing like a woman getting an abortion (or using birth control).

Every woman who chooses, or even just considers, an abortion has a different reason. It’s a personal decision. It’s a difficult decision. It’s emotional. And the decision is made with life in mind. A life that the woman has planned for herself and wants to see through.

Women are not Nazis. Women are not slave owners. Women are not blasphemous sinners. Women are one half of the world’s population. Women are living, breathing, thinking humans who have the capability to make their own decisions about their bodies and their lives.

They should also have the legal right.