Next Tuesday in Mississippi, voters will decide on Initiative 26, a new constitutional amendment which will define radically redefine the legal conception of personhood, considering a person “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.” While this may appear to be just another shot in the on-going abortion wars, the personhood movement is a new development with disturbing, potentially far-reaching consequences.
The New York Times has termed the Mississippi bill “ambiguous,” pointing out that:
The term “fertilization” — which is sometimes considered synonymous with “conception” — could mean at least four different things: penetration of the egg by a sperm, assembly of the new embryonic genome, successful activation of that genome, and implantation of the embryo in the uterus.
The Mississippi bill will definitely outlaw abortion in all its forms, but the ambiguity of this amendment leaves health-care providers and activists alike puzzled as to the effects on contraception access. Feminists have been warning for some time that contraception is the next frontline in anti-choice politics. In February, NARAL President Nancy Keenan warned that “they now want to deny funding for birth control, even though that’s the best way to prevent unintended pregnancy. Americans will not stand for this blatant hypocrisy.”
While some personhood advocates vehemently deny any attacks on contraception, recently Personhood movement spokesman Walter Hoye admitted to NPR’s Diane Rehm that “any birth control that ends the life of a human being will be impacted by this measure,” including IUDs and the Pill. In any definition of the four definitions of “fertilization” proffered by the New York Times, Plan B or “the morning after pill” will be newly illegal.Though there have been some recent victories (for instance, the August newsthat insurance plans in the US will be required to cover contraception without co-pay), it’s hard not to wonder if we are nearing some kind of an endgame in the abortion wars in the most anti-choice areas of the United States. Whether it is in Mississippi or not, it seems only a matter of time before a state follows this personhood movement into banning contraception altogether.The effects of this would be widespread indeed. The Guttmacher Institute points out that “siixty-three percent of reproductive-age women who practice contraception use nonpermanent methods, including hormonal methods (such as the pill, patch, implant, injectable and vaginal ring), the IUD and condoms” while “virtually all women (more than 99%) aged 15–44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method.” No wonder Personhood advocates are trying to remain circumspect about this possibility before Tuesday’s vote.
The New York Times is being characteristically measured: this is not merely “ambiguous,” it is nonsensical legally, biologically, ethically, theologically. It is especially ludicrous to criminalize behaviours that nature itself produces–the vast majority of conceptions naturally do not make it to term. But ludicrousness has never stopped the famously fact-averse anti-choice movement, of course. There is, after all, a strong link between the “pro-life” movement and the laughably ineffective “abstinence only” sex education programs infesting American schools, and promoted by the United States in its foreign aid.
Perhaps, in the red states, we will all be teenagers, soon.