Personhood: Why MS's Victory is Important

First of all: Whooooooo!!!!! We did it!!!! I don't know if I've ever woken up singing and dancing, but I did today.

Ok. So why is this a big deal? We know that personhood initiatives are in the works in other states, and less than twelve hours after our victory, we know that personhood supporters are going to try to work this through our legislature (which is now even more Republican and anti-woman [not that Republican and anti-woman are synonymous, but in today's political climate, they are more than they aren't]). So how much of a victory is this?

A HUGE ONE! After failing twice in Colorado, Personhood USA handpicked Mississippi as the conservative and uneducated state that might just pass this initiative without taking the time to learn about it, or just by having strong anti-abortion feelings. They thought that we would just let them walk all over us, and we proved them absolutely wrong. We will not be condescended to as the dumb scum of the US in overalls and no shoes. We have shoes, we have brains, and we used them to get the word out about how dangerous Initiative 26 really was. As this article in the Huffington Post said,

The forces who brought Personhood before the public insulted the intellectual and cultural sensibilities of thousands of Mississippians. They assumed Mississippi would be a cake walk. They provided grandma's 1970's abortion language that didn't speak to many younger, yet conservative, Mississippians. They were sloppy in their organizing and flippant about their opposition; condescending. Their official Personhood website looks like my child's 4th grade class designed it.


Don't treat us like idiots, because we're not. We care, and we fought against this amendment in one of the most conservative states in the nation. If we can do it, other states can. Yes, the fight is just beginning, but our victory is huge (even the White House has commented on it), and I'm gonna take a day to celebrate and dance around with a song in my head because I am proud to be a Mississippian today, and tomorrow I can begin to fight for these rights in the rest of the country (as well as continuing the fight here). I'll end this post with my favorite quote from the article mentioned above:


There's a lesson here about showing up in Mississippi without your game face on.

Personhood: Not Just in "Backwards" Mississippi

I'm so excited that the personhood amendment on the Mississippi ballot today is getting so much national attention; however, along with that attention has been a good ol' helping of Southern- and Mississippi-hating by people who believe all the stereotypes about the South.

On Rachel Maddow's blog, a recent article about personhood was followed by several comments from readers, including "Secede already!" Really? A bad initiative on the ballot in Mississippi is equivalent to terrible decisions made over a hundred years ago over slavery? Let's recap:

Mississippi is not the first state to vote on proposed personhood amendments. Colorado has voted on them twice, and voted them down twice.

Mississippians are not responsible for this initiative appearing on the ballot. Personhood USA is the group behind these initiatives in Colorado and Mississippi. Personhood USA is trying to push a national agenda against abortion, and they're doing it state by state. They are currently trying to get similar initiatives on the ballot in at least six other states, and have petitions to do the same in all fifty states. This well-funded, extremist group is working extremely hard to overturn Roe v. Wade, and they see these personhood measures as the best way to do it.

You may say, this is all true BUT didn't Mississippians have to sign a petition to get this on the ballot in the first place? True. Now, I never saw the petition, but from what I've heard, the petition basically said "Do you think abortion should be illegal?" It did not say "Do you think the State Constitution should be amended to to make every single fertilized egg a person?" It did not say, "Do you think birth control, IVF, stem cell research, and safe, medical treatment for dangerous pregnancies should be endangered?" It was a manipulation of Mississippi voters. And I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same way that the measures were put on the Colorado ballot, or the way that they are attempting to get them on others.

Even today, when we go to the polls, we are simply asked if a fertilized egg should now be defined as a person; there is no mention of the State Constitution being amended. Voters who have not been able to follow the local and national coverage will not be fully informed of what they are voting on.

So when news followers from other states make comments about how backwards Mississippians are and how we deserve everything we get because we are so dumb, ill-educated and extremely conservative, let's remind them that their states could soon be facing this same question on their ballot. Let's remind them that Personhood USA is a national group, not a Mississippi one, and that personhood initiatives are a national problem, not just a Mississippi problem.

And most importantly, let's go out today and VOTE NO on 26, and prove that Personhood USA can't just assume that because we are a traditionally conservative state that we will allow our voters to be manipulated by a group with our worst interests at heart.

Abortion, Adoption, and the Pregnancy in the Middle That No One's Talking About

Last night I attended the forum on Initiative 26 at the Ole Miss Law School. The panelists and many commenters brought up countless problems with the initiative: with the language, with the intent vs. the potential interpretation, and with the unintended consequences. And of course, there were many commenters from the Yes side who voiced their opinions. I didn't speak up at the forum because most of the time I was so flushed, angry and appalled that I couldn't have strung together a coherent sentence. I also didn't respond because most of the commenters from the No side who did respond voiced my opinions along with their own. But there's one response I wish I had made, and so even though the man I'm responding to will most likely never read this, I'm going to post my response here.

The issue of forcing rape victims to continue a pregnancy to term when they have been impregnated by their rapist came up, as it often does in these debates. More than one women spoke about how demeaning rape is, and how mentally, physically, and emotionally terrible it would be to carry a conceived-in-rape pregnancy. Then a local pastor spoke up. He was polite, and I think he truly believed what he was saying, but he was very naive. He said that he is an adoptive father, and that he knows many people in his congregation who, if a woman came to them and said, "I've been raped and I would like you to adopt my baby," they would be more than happy to adopt that child. I was annoyed by how easy he made the adoption process seem when we know it is not at all easy. And a couple of people responded to him. Cristen Hemmins, a panelist at the forum and a local activist for No on 26, pointed out the vast number of children in our country right now who are in need of adoption; why aren't these "good Christians" offering to adopt these children? Elizabeth Feder Hosey, the panel's organizer and the founder of a new student organization for reproductive justice, also spoke up, saying that "as a recently pregnant woman," she felt that no one who has not been pregnant should be able to tell women that they have to carry a pregnancy to term. Both of these responses were perfect, and should be enough. But in case they are not, I have another one.

We still have a wage gap in this country. Women make less than men when in the same jobs. And women who are mothers make less than women who are not. Women do not get paid maternity leave in this country. Most women who have babies have to use up their vacation time, time that should be spent on rest and relaxation, for their first weeks as sleep-deprived, emotionally and physically exhausted mothers. Other women use their sick leave, as if pregnancy were a disease. My mother, one of the hardest working women I know, someone who was both a great parent and is great at her job, has almost never taken a vacation from work. Now, I can't speak for the years before my sisters and I were born, but I can not recall her having taken a legitimate vacation from work ever when I was growing up. Why? Because she had to use her vacation time, as well as her sick leave, for her children. She took twelve weeks off when my older sister was born. Those twelve weeks were made up of accumulated vacation time that she had never taken for herself. When I was born, she took off twelve weeks from more accumulated vacation time. By the time my younger sister was born, she took off what little vacation time she had left, and the rest was unpaid sick/maternity leave. When we were growing up, she used her sick days, her personal days, her vacation days for the days when she needed to take us to the doctor, to stay home with us, to chaperone field trips. She took a huge pay cut to change jobs so that her job could accommodate these missed days for children.

So when people (and yes, they are usually men) say that women should carry an unwanted pregnancy to full term, I ask them to think not just of the already living children in need of adoption. I ask them not to think only of the physical and emotional difficulties of living while pregnant. I ask them to also think of the financial strains you are putting on the woman. Just because a woman knows that at the end of this pregnancy she will pass the child along to someone else, doesn't change the fact that she will have to miss work for doctors' visits. It doesn't change the fact that she will have to take days off because sometimes she will be so sick and feel so terrible that she simply cannot make it to work. It doesn't change the fact that she will have to take unpaid time off from work to give birth. It doesn't change the fact that in order to keep making money, she will most likely have to work right up until the point she goes into labor (which, hopefully, won't occur at work, but very well could).

And in my opinion, the fact that she doesn't want this pregnancy, and the fact that she won't be raising a child at the end of this difficult nine months doesn't make this process easier on her. It makes it much, much more difficult.

When Initiative 26 supporters ask women to carry these pregnancies and to choose adoption, they don't think about the pregnancy. They don't think about the physical, emotional, and financial commitments the women are making. Because, of course, they aren't thinking about the women at all. But let's talk about the women being forced to carry unwanted pregnancies. And while we're at it, let's talk about the other women we aren't taking care of: the women who want their babies, the women who are working round the clock during the last months of pregnancy to make up for the unpaid time they are facing, the women who are running themselves ragged to be both parents and workers.

Before we force more women to work and live while pregnant, let's take care of the women who are choosing to work and live while pregnant, and let's give them some support.

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!

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!

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 Movement and Women's Rights

As a woman and a feminist living in Mississippi, I have to comment on the personhood movement and the upcoming vote in November for Amendment 26. In this post, I discuss a short history of women’s reproductive rights in the United States, and how the personhood movement is a threat to all women, no matter their stance on abortion. In later posts, I hope to cover other issues related to this movement, reproductive rights, and the upcoming vote.

If asked, the average woman in the US today would probably say that an abortion is a legal option for any woman with an unwanted pregnancy. Unless, of course, that woman is of low-income, without health insurance, or both. Or, if that woman is a minor afraid to speak to her parents. Or, if that woman has been given inaccurate information about what an abortion is and does. Yeah, other than that, perfectly available option.

Obviously, the right to choose is not that. The right to choose barely exists. Many people feel that the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wadewas the victory for women’s reproductive rights. But ever since that decision, politicians, anti-choice groups and activists have been taking away those same rights, bit by bit.

Roe v. Wade ultimately granted the right to have a legal abortion because the Court decided that this fell under the right to privacy (established by Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972). The decision stated that the "right of privacy…is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

However, the first strike against this right came just three years later, with the Hyde Amendment. This amendment took abortions out of Medicaid health plans. As any other medical procedure, an abortion is expensive; if it’s not covered by health insurance, most low-income women have no access to it. They can either risk an unsafe, cheap abortion or carry the pregnancy to term. Strike one.

Also in 1976, Maher v. Roe was decided in South Carolina. The courts ruled that the state was not required to pay for abortions and hospitals were not required to perform them. Women would simply have to search around for someone willing to do it. Strike two.

In the 1970s and 80s, laws were passed putting more restrictions on abortions. Now, women had to have the permission of a husband, wait 24 hours before having the procedure, attend mandatory counseling in which they are encouraged not to have the abortion, and, if a minor, gain consent of a parent. Strike three. And four. And five…. I’ve lost count.

Today, the personhood movement is attempting to strip away even more rights granted by Roe. Amendment 26 aims to define life as beginning at the moment of conception. This would make abortions murder. But worse than that, by defining life in this way, we could lose birth control pills, contraceptives, in vitro fertilization. Women suffering miscarriages could be charged (and have been) with murder or manslaughter. If doctors had to choose between saving a pregnancy and saving the woman, they could end up “murderers” either way.

While the personhood movement wants to criminalize abortion, the potential consequences are far wider and deeper. More than the right to an abortion is at stake here. The right to plan a family is at stake. The right to hold off childbearing while getting through school or starting a career is at stake.

Pro-choice activists (a group I count myself in) have to stop arguing for abortion in extreme cases. It’s so easy to say, “What about the pregnant rape victim? The pregnant incest victim? Shouldn’t they have the right to an abortion, or the morning after pill?” Yes, they should. But all women should have the right to plan, and time, their families as they choose. We have to argue for all women who want control over their lives and their bodies. We have to argue for the right to live in this world as we want to. As Gloria Feldt wrote in her book War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women’s Rights and How to Fight Back:


       Having the right to choose determines whether women will find an equal place at life’s table, whether children will be truly valued, and whether everyone’s personal liberties, privacy, and bodily integrity will be safeguarded.