North Dakota’s passage last week of the “Personhood of Children Act”, a bit of batshit insanity that bestows the rights of you or me onto a fertilized egg, has farther-reaching consequences than merely(!?) banning abortion. Those include contraception, reproductive health services, IVF and stem-cell research, and are summarized here.
Of course, fetus humpers as a class tend to be catastrophically dull-witted and rarely think ahead to things like “consequences” and “repercussions”. The only way to properly enforce an egg-as-person law and protect fertilized eggs from being knowingly or unknowingly “murdered” would be to limit and monitor the activities of all women of childbearing age. Sorry honey, no snowboarding for you. Get that drink out of your hand. Drop those barbells, hang up those running shoes. You are a potential incubator, act like one.
Rolling on down Bad Craziness Avenue, consider what else the POC Act could impact: tax law, for example — fertilized eggs are the ultimate dependents, so certainly they should be claimable on a tax return. And welfare — a woman carrying a fertilized egg should be able to claim not just for herself but for her 2-celled blasto-child.
Why not? If state governments plan on conferring the rights of personhood to an egg to the point where the egg’s rights supersede those of the woman carrying it, they should at least be consistent about it.
It’s hard to say whether this thing will make it past the Senate, or if indeed it does (the state senate and governor are both anti-choice), whether it would stand up to any legal challenges. But this is the new anti-choice strategy in the USA, and it’s only a matter of time before they start banging the same gong up here. Last year’s aborted Bill C-484 was the first incremental step, this session we will undoubtedly see more of the same. Forwarned is forearmed.
(h/t CC for the vid)
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When this idiocy was proposed last year in Colorado, the Colorado Bar Association made the point that the word ‘person’ occurs about 20,000 times in legislation there and a redefinition of it would affect nearly every law in the state: criminal law, family law, estate law, tort law, health law, etbloodycetera.
I really think the personhood initiative will kill the fetus fetishist movement. Even some fetus fetishists are against it for the very reason that it shrieeeeeks INSANITY for all to hear.
fern hill – I’m sure there’s a method to their madness. Although the legislation is crafted for the express purpose of challenging Roe v. Wade, I’ve read conflicting reports on how it might affect RvW — some say not at all.
It might have more to do with pushing Obama into taking a stand on abortion and re-igniting this as an issue just in time for the 2010 midterm elections.
OTOH, it could be just because they’re fucking nuts.
But I don’t see how this can work without pre-natal tests to determine if the “person” is gay or lesbian and therefore somehow NOT a person after all.
RB: heeheehee…. good one!
And yes – they’re “fucking nuts” JJ!
RB —
Oooh, that’d be a bit of a fly in the ointment. Of course these people work on the assumption that you can pray away any “undesirable” qualities. Eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, gayness, you know. It’s all in the prayer technique. (I am praying for green eyes even as I type this.)
Joe – Ya think!?? I’m glad for these personhood laws in a way — they really serve to highlight the insanity.
Does a 2-celled blasto-child require a passport to cross the border? Or can he/she be listed on the mother’s?
And since states record birth records, would they now have to start collecting “conception records”? And what would that entail? Mandatory videotaping of women having sex? Every time they get boned, just in case?
On the bright side, that sure as hell would make rape a bit easier to prosecute…
Since the Yahoo link is in effect an American Fetus Fetishist League press release, I thought I might comment on this one snippet:
Yeah, right. If you nutbars are the new “civil rights movement,” then I’m the heir to the throne of Zanzibar.
North Dakota. February. Enough said.
And since states record birth records, would they now have to start collecting “conception records”? And what would that entail? Mandatory videotaping of women having sex? Every time they get boned, just in case?
What an inspired make work project. Should be part of the North Dakota stimulus package.
Beijing – A fair question. But a passport would be kind of useless before he/she reaches a gestational stage where he/she is visible to the naked eye.
JAB
Of course! We’d need a whole other police force just to patrol peoples’ sex lives. But that sounds about par for these people, there’s nothing they like more than voyeuring.
*sigh* Yes, that’s how they’re framing it these days, as a “civil rights” movement. Kind of trivializes the real civil rights movement, but what do they care.
MoS
Cabin fever??
beijing
All kidding aside, I’ve read that this thing will end up costing N. Dakota in the millions. Not a very wise use of taxpayers’ money when the economy is imploding. But what do they care? There are fertilized eggs at stake.
Oh and if blastocyst is a person, every miscarriage must be followed by a proper funeral. That would keep the churches busy non-stop, not to mention providing additional income for funeral homes. Sounds like a win-win situation to me!
Fuck ‘em. Let them bankrupt their stoopid (and ugly except for the parts with the badlands and the national grasslands) state with this nanny state bullshit, courtesy of the people they voted in. Let them turn their state into a mini Ceausescu-era Romania. Apparently that’s what they want. In a generation more than half the women will be gone, moved on to more enlightened states where their reproductive lives are private instead of the business of the state of North Dakota.
And ND, don’t come crying to the federal government when you need money for orphanages, either, ya fuckin’ losers.
If the foetus doesn’t have a passport because it’s not visible, then obviously ever pregnant woman attempting to cross a border should be charged with kidnapping and trafficking in human beings.
(Really, do I have to explain EVERYTHING to you people? Sheesh!)
“every miscarriage must be followed by a proper funeral”
Then every period should have to be followed by a funeral, to make sure not to miss those early miscarriages that no one even realizes are happening.
I wonder how one would do that? Have a funeral for menstrual blood?
Alison S –
A new way to recycle empty match boxes!
Dr.Prole
There won’t be orphanages, instead the churches will run Jesus Camps where they raise the unwanted unborn and train them to be Christian Soldiers fighting the Culture Wars, all financed by Focus on the Family.
I wish I was kidding
RB
Yet another repercussion of this ill-conceived idea to make an egg equal to a person. Every woman may be a potential human trafficker!
“I wonder how one would do that? Have a funeral for menstrual blood?”
Well at least if the woman was a few day’s late.
“A new way to recycle empty match boxes!”
Great idea. Do they still make match boxes? Anyhow, they would have to be lined in satin and have tiny handles. I wonder if it would be an open casket funeral? After all, surely they would want to see the remains of the ‘loved one’.
orange
Those are God’s Abortions, the ones fundies never talk about. So, no funerals for them.
AlisonS – Oh yeah, they still make matchboxes. I have a pile of them in a jar next to my woodstove (they make easier lighting).
Some of them are pretty cute — I have one that looks like a little mini cigarette pack, the top flips up and there are all these little matches inside. It would make a good blasto-coffin.
JJ – Surely “God’s Abortions” are no different than the death of a born person. A person is a person after all. Isn’t that what the fundies would have us believe?
Idea: if the wingnuts can “re-brand” the SWC as “SOW,” why can’t we do the same with the POC?
” Surely “God’s Abortions” are no different than the death of a born person. A person is a person after all. Isn’t that what the fundies would have us believe?”
most of you are probably familiar with the Old Testacle – I mean testament. It does not consider a foetus a human life:
Exodus 21
21:22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
If two men fight and cause a woman to miscarry, but do not hurt her, then the one who hurt her shall pay her husband an amount determined by the judges. Only if the woman dies is the punishment to be death.
(however, further reading shows that if you take a life, you pay with a life) –
21:23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
21:24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
21:25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Pretty clear that a woman’s “fruit” is not considered a life, and furthermore, it is “her” fruit. Pretty messed up though that the husband gets cash as compensation if someone causes miscarriage of her fruit.
Interesting 900ft. So does that mean that Epps’ Bill (now thankfully defunct) was actually more of an agricultural measure to compensate for the loss of fruit?
AlisonS
No, that’s just different
Don’t ask why, it collapses the whole house of cards.
JAB – I forgot that POC already means person of colour. Ack! I will henceforth refer to this idiotic legislation as the “Personhood of Eggs” Act (POE).
900
Thanks, I’ve been looking for that passage, it can come in handy when they talk about how the bible says a person’s “soul” enters them at conception. That might very well be true (if you believe in souls), but even so, the value of a fetus is clearly not the same as the value of its mother, according to the Bible.
Beijing
Good morrow, all!
Does it not then follow that such a law would require that every teenage boy who wakes up with wood (Hands off, Master Bates!) is bound by such a law to sing the following (at the top of his lungs)?
Up Next: Simon Cowell presents: PUBERTY IDOL!
The Unknown law of Thermodynamics: You can’t fix stupid. CTZen
Good morrow, Cornelius!
I suppose that’s next on the “pro-life” agenda. Every one of those little tadpoles is bursting with abundant life, after all, and every life is precious
“… the average ejaculate contains between 40 million to 600 million sperm, depending on the volume of cum,” says http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/semen.html
So that means there should be 40 million to 600 million rituals of penitence after every ejaculation. How can the authorities tell if there should be 40 million or 600 million singing of songs or funerals or self-lashings or whatever? By monitoring every moment of every man’s life and measuring the amount of his ejaculate … they’ll have to work out some way of calculating unless they count each individual sperm each time under a microscope …
They’ll have to monitor every moment of every man and every woman’s life to keep control over this thing.
But God should make it possible.