No Unity with These People
by David Atkins
Voters in Mississippi will decide on Tuesday if they want to enshrine in State Law that a fertilized egg is a human being:
An insurgent antiabortion movement that is gaining momentum nationwide is hoping for its first electoral victory Tuesday, when Mississippi voters will decide whether to designate a fertilized egg as a person and potentially label its destruction an act of murder.
If approved, the nation’s first “personhood” amendment could criminalize abortion and limit in-vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control. It also would give a jolt of energy to a national movement that views mainstream antiabortion activists as timid and complacent.
They’ve just taken an incremental approach,” said Les Riley, the founder of Personhood Mississippi and a self-described tractor salesman and father of 10 who initiated the state’s effort. “We’re just going to the heart of the matter, which is: Is this a person or not? God says it is, and science has confirmed it.”
“Life-at-conception” ballot initiatives in other parts of the country, including Colorado last year, have failed amid concerns about their far-reaching, and in some cases unforeseeable, implications.
Given that 2/3 of all fertilized eggs fail to implant properly in the uterus, perhaps these “pro-life” activists should ask their God why He chooses to murder 2/3 of all little spherical-shaped human beings before they can even make it past day 12. I doubt they’ll get that far, though. This isn’t about their God or about little babies smaller than a pinhead. This is about people who feel that society has gotten just too far out of control, and the way to bring it back is to punish women for daring to open their legs except to procreate.
And they’ll pass blatantly unconstitutional laws to force the Supreme Court’s hand if they have to, even if it means finishing the job of tearing the nation in two that their similarly righteous confederates started a century and a half ago.
It doesn’t matter how many Occupy movements declare 99% solidarity on economic issues. There will never be unity with these people. One side is going to win in the legislative and judicial arenas (which means elections, like it not, where the President’s Supreme Court choices on social issues will matter, whatever one thinks of the President on economic matters), or it will become necessary to dissolve the political bands that connect us.
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