Personhood: The Chicken or the Egg?

Dear Neighbors:

This Initiative may soon become law in Mississippi.

This guy thinks it's a good idea.

If you throw enough crazy at the wall, eventually something will stick. It certainly has in Mississippi. Anti-choice, anti-woman activists have found a new way to force women to give birth regardless of the circumstances. Say hello to Proposition 26, brought to you by Personhood USA. I'm going to guess that this organization's supporters aren't very good at chess, because they clearly haven't thought even one move ahead.


Or at all, really. Very few state senators are speaking out against it -- neither the Republicans nor the Democrats wish to threaten their positions by challenging a proposition whose ramifications only begin with abortion.


I live in California so I don't need to worry about this sort of thing, do I? Wrong. The California Civil Rights Foundation has its own petition (as do many other states) that reads as follows:


The term “person” applies to all living human organisms from the beginning of their biological development -- regardless of the means by which they were procreated, method of reproduction, age, race, sex, gender, physical well-being, function, or condition of physical or mental dependency and/or disability.


 What does this mean for women?

• Clearly, this means that women can no longer have abortions for any reason. The "regardless of the means by which they were procreated" rules out the cases of rape or incest. Think about how to tell a 12 year-old girl that it's too bad she was raped, but she's going to have to give birth. Her civil rights don't matter, apparently. The rest of the statement will rule out abortion when the fetus is likely to be stillborn or have severe disabilities. It also means that if a pregnant woman's life is threatened by her pregnancy, the fetus cannot be aborted to save her. In other words, a woman who becomes pregnant forfeits her civil rights for the duration of the pregnancy. 
• A woman who needs to abort in order to have chemotherapy will just have to wait it out and hope that she lives long enough to have the cancer treated. Her Person is more important than her health.
  
• No more emergency contraception; we'll be lucky to be permitted any birth control at all. The same people who want Personhood are the same people who don't understand how birth control works.
• Miscarriages will become unending tragedies as the death of the Person will need to be investigated as if the Person were born. If you have a miscarriage and you, at one time, e-mailed your BFF about your doubts about being a good mother, it's going to be used against you in a court of law. Good luck with that.
• A woman hoping to get pregnant will have to give fertility drugs serious consideration; she won't be able to use selective reduction to increase the chances that she and her People will survive. Pregnant with ten People? You're going to stay pregnant with ten People.
• Women who wish to bear children will become slaves; once a woman becomes pregnant, her body belongs to the Person inside of it for the entire nine months.

Why do I insist that Personhood USA is made up of dumbasses?


Because it is. Our country's laws are based on the precedent system. Each new judicial decision or law passed can become the foundation for new decisions and new laws. If the unborn are declared people, the following must happen:


1. The Person must be issued a Personhood certificate and a name.  

Which will be difficult to fill out completely seeing as how the couple must remember the exact date that they had unprotected sex, because that's the Person's new Fertilization Day. His or her age will have to be determined by this date and not the date he or she was born. It won't be easy coming up with a name before they even know what they're having, but every Person is entitled to a name, so they damn well better find one. If they guess wrong, I suppose they can have it changed, right? Imagine what the county clerk's office is going to look like.

Waiting to change the Person's name so his unborn friends don't make fun of him.

Your tax break begins now.

2. If I, for example, were to successfully pee on a stick on December 31st, I should be able to get a tax break for that year. I have a Person now. And what about child support? Men should start supporting their People as soon as they become People. Of course, the Person may not be his Person, so a DNA test will be necessary. This one's going to go to court. After all, there are no non-invasive procedures for prenatal paternity tests. The mother will argue that it's her body and he can just wait until the birth, and the potential father will argue that if he's going to pay child support, he wants DNA evidence. Hope they televise the trial.


3. Businesses can take advantage of Personhood. Pregnant women can be counted as two people at any venue that requires each Person to buy a ticket. They're still safe on airplanes, but what about the movies? It may be one seat, but it could be argued that the Person is enjoying the movie as well and should pay accordingly.


4. We need to count carefully in any space, such as an elevator, that has a maximum capacity. Someone will need to be assigned to question every woman and ask if she's pregnant.


5. Limit one per Person? Fantastic! Think of the great deals that pregnant women will get in the grocery store and at the mall, just by clipping those "limit one per person" coupons. The real schemers can claim to be carrying twins or triplets to really cash in on the deal.

You and your Person belong in the carpool lane.

6. Hello, carpool lane!   










7. Establishments that serve alcohol will now have to come equipped with pregnancy tests. Since they're not allowed to serve minors, bartenders will have to ensure that any woman who orders an alcoholic drink is not pregnant. Think the line for the bathroom was long before?


8. A Person will require separate coverage under his or her parents' health insurance from the time of conception. Another great lawsuit -- at what point does the Person require coverage and who should pay for it?


9. Sex during pregnancy will be outlawed. After all, you can't have sex in front of your underage Person. That's just sick. 

10. Touching a pregnant belly will qualify as child molestation.

This is only one of numerous anti-woman, anti-choice campaigns taking place throughout the United States. 


Dumbassery-on-a-stick,


D