Personhood USA Blames Planned Parenthood For Loss in Mississippi

An extreme measure that would have given legal "personhood" status to undeveloped zygotes failed among ultra-conservative Mississippi voters Tuesday night, after a history of being rejected twice in Colorado and a struggle to even get on ballots in nine other states. But Personhood USA fully blames the Mississippi loss on Planned Parenthood.

"It's not because the people are not pro-life," Keith Mason, a co-founder of Personhood USA, said on Tuesday. "It's because Planned Parenthood put a lot of misconceptions and lies in front of folks and created a lot of confusion."

"We're not discouraged," Bryan Longworth, director of Personhood Florida, told HuffPost after the vote. "It shows that the arguments that are being raised by Planned Parenthood, the scare tactics, and the second-guessing of Governor Haley Barbour did play a role."

Nearly 60 percent of Mississippians voted against Proposition 26, with 58 percent against and 42 percent in support. The decisive loss was surprising in a state that simultaneously elected as governor far-right Republican Phil Bryant, who recently said that if the personhood initiative failed, "Satan wins."

Ultimately, the pro-choice groups helped defeat the Personhood campaign in a three-month-long information war. The official "no" campaign, Mississippians for Healthy Families, joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood to warn Mississippi voters about the potentially dangerous consequences of the amendment for contraception, in vitro fertilization, life-threatening pregnancy complications and stem cell research.

"The issue is complex, but at end of day it limits the way families can plan for pregnancies by banning birth control and in vitro fertilization," Leola Reis, vice president of external affairs at Planned Parenthood Southeast and a spokesperson for the "No on 26" campaign, said last week. "At the end of the day it's such a complex quagmire, it could have huge medical and legal ramifications, and it's going to cost a lot of money if left to the court to sort out."

The non-partisan American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists took sides with Planned Parenthood in a statement on Tuesday, urging voters to reject the amendment because of its potential to "impact access to women's health, including treatment for cancer, infertility treatment, birth control options and pregnancy termination."

But Personhood USA maintains that Planned Parenthood spread lies about the initiative's ramifications. It would not ban birth control or in vitro fertilization, the group says.

"It's just one sentence that says every human being is a person," Jennifer Mason, spokesperson for Personhood USA, told HuffPost on Tuesday. "We're out combating the lies and getting the truth out, so we'll see what happens."

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R) delivered a major blow to the Personhood campaign last week when he echoed some of Planned Parenthood's concerns in a Wednesday interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd.

"I am concerned about some of the ramifications on in vitro fertilization and [ectopic] pregnancies where pregnancies [occur] outside the uterus and [in] the fallopian tubes," Barbour said. "That concerns me, I have to just say it."

Planned Parenthood organized a mass robocall with Barbour's comments Wednesday night. Barbour ended up voting for the personhood initiative in an absentee ballot the following day, but the damage had already been done among Mississippi voters.

"A pro-abortion group has called people's homes and deceived voters into thinking I'm opposed to Initiative 26, the Personhood Amendment," Barbour said in a statement. "As I've previously stated, I voted for the Personhood Amendment. These misleading calls were made without my knowledge, without my permission and against my wishes. I have demanded this deception be stopped, and those responsible have assured me that no more calls will be made."

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America said on Tuesday night that voters rejected the personhood amendment because the "no" campaign was able to educate voters on the measure's far-reaching consequences.

"The more voters learned about the many dangerous and extreme consequences of the initiative, the more they opposed it," PPFA said in a statement. "Polling showed that in the final days leading up to the vote, when voters were given information about the so-called 'personhood' amendment, support for it dropped below 50 percent."

Despite the crushing loss in Mississippi, Personhood USA says it is not discouraged and will continue to press on in nine other states across the country. Personhood Florida, which has gathered 20,000 signatures so far toward getting a personhood measure on the ballot in 2014, views the fight for the rights of zygotes as a historically significant civil rights struggle on par with the fight against slavery.

"Where do you go to buy a good slave today?" Longworth told HuffPost. "You can't get one. Why? Because people now see slavery as abhorrent, and one day people will see abortion as equally abhorrent, if not more abhorrent."

Comments

[All Seeing Guy]

03:53 PM on 11/14/2011

Well, these creeps would know all about misconceptions and lies wouldn't they.

Pro-life! pro-life! pro-life! *once they're out of the womb* Bomb Iran! %$#@'em if they're poor!

[Elmer Galt]

04:22 PM on 11/13/2011

A man goes into a Whole Foods store and picks up a carton of a dozen eggs. When he goes to the cashier to pay, the cashier, a recent transplant from Mississippi, says, "That'll be $76.80, please." "What?! How'd you figure that?" the man exclaims. "Well, sir," says the cashier,
" fryers average 4 pounds, at $1.60 per pound that comes to $6.40 per, and 12 x $6.40 equals $76.80." "But these are just EGGS!" sputters the man. "Sir," explains the cashier, pointing to the label, "these are FERTILIZED EGGS: they're chickens."

[splashy]

02:29 AM on 11/12/2011

They keep acting as though making abortion illegal will stop abortions. That is not facing reality. Poor women will still get them but in unsafe conditions, done by the criminal and untrained. Well-to-do women will get them either out of state of in secret.

That's the bottom line: are abortions safe or not? If these people had their way, many many girls and women would suffer and die, like they used to.

But, we must remember - these people hate girls and women and want to sadistically hurt them. That's their goal, and they will pursue it in their warped way as long as they hate them.

[Austin Horsegal]

11:56 AM on 11/11/2011

On Longworth's 'slavery' comment, he should realize that a clump of cells that holds a woman hostage for 9 months can be another form of slavery.

[Metrorail Rider]

10:36 AM on 11/11/2011

Human life cannot begin at conception. At conception all that exists are clumps of cells, including nerve cells within a little ball. Clearly not human life. Life requires at least a functioning heart and brain which occurs at around week 8 when the embryo becomes a fetus towards the end of the first trimester. However, the concern is viable human life... and when might that exist. Week 27 marks the end of the second trimester. If born at this point, the fetus may survive, but would usually face potentially serious problems. Modern technology has reduced the age for viable life to a minimum of 20 weeks. Therefore, viable human life cannot exist at conception (or fertilization). Instead, let's argue about how to create more demand for goods and services, which would lead to more jobs and a better economy.

[Illuminarts]

06:12 AM on 11/11/2011

This whole thing reminds me of _The Handmaid's Tale_.

[Blah]

02:36 PM on 11/10/2011

Hmmm, it's not at all possible that it failed because it was an awful bill eh? I mean, if you have anti-abortion folks voting against this you KNOW you've done something wrong.

[absolutelyInsane]

08:07 AM on 11/10/2011

When you don't get your way, lets play the blame game.

[dzadzey]

05:59 AM on 11/10/2011

Satan won...At least that's according to Mississippi's Governor-elect, Phil Bryant who stood firmly in support of the "personhood" law. So, Planned Parenthood had nothing to do with it.

But if we look deeper here, we see the persecution complex used by the religious right to keep its calf-eyed, credulous followers in line. Any view opposed to that narrow, dogmatic, politically motivated and, in some cases fabricated from whole cloth, interpretation of scripture is held to be the "work of the devil". And that's enough to keep the unquestioning herd on the straight and narrow.

[KaraC]

10:31 PM on 11/09/2011

I am curious, had this lunacy actually passed, would this allow any person to take up residence in a woman's uterus without her permission, or only "ball of cells" sized people? The biggest hypocrisy of this is that even the supporters clearly didn't believe their own case, and were as good as admitting that it was simply a way to force a challenge to Roe vs. Wade. That's how low they have sunk.

[tazzle]

12:58 AM on 11/10/2011

And if it had gone all the way to the Supreme Court, then what? The problem would still remain that the justices would have to answer that one question: WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN? Mississippi is the most conservative state in the union and it trounced this personhood nonsense soundly. What kind of quandry would the Supremes find themselves in if they took on the rest of the country on this? If life begins at the moment of conception, then the fact remains that an abortion occurs whether you terminate a pregnancy immediately after conception, as with the Pill or IUD, or surgically after it's been implanted. Yeah, they could outlaw abortion. And even contraception. But, they'd get a backlash that would never get another Republican elected into office again and would immediately start a petition for a Constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme's decision. Reproductive rights enshrined as constitutional law would backfire on religious conservatives in the worse way imaginable and would be their greatest nightmare.

[rebeccamherman]

08:15 PM on 11/09/2011

The reason this law failed had nothing to do with Planned Parenthood. It is because most people felt it was too extreme. Even among those who are against elective abortions, most do not want to ban birth control, IVF, or abortions performed because of rape, incest, or a threat to the woman's life or health. I saw quotes from anti-abortion voters who voted against it for those very reasons - because it could effect birth control, fertility treatments, and non elective abortions.

[RutherfordLaser]

06:23 PM on 11/09/2011

Yeah sure. It didn't have anything to do with the fact that it made absolutely no sense. It was those darn Planned Parenthood people!

[Ghost Grey]

07:02 PM on 11/09/2011

I am sure that Planned Parenthood supporters did oppose it solely on the grounds that it was connected with the pro life argument or even a friend told a friend that it was. So the suspicion simply that they may have shown up at the polls is probably not unfounded. A few comments in this section along the lines of "I donated to PP and this is a big victory for choiceeeeee" will tell you that. It does not mean they are intelligent. From some of your comments I take you to be in that camp.

[RutherfordLaser]

07:11 PM on 11/09/2011

I never said one side was any more intelligent than the other. Though if I were a betting man I'd say the ones that don't think that fertilized globs of cells are people have a leg up in the brains department. They are also the ones who can see beyond their noses and realized this harebrained initiative would have consequences far more vast than anticipated.

[Twelve]

06:19 PM on 11/09/2011

Oh good grief. I am totally and completely sick of jesus freaks!

[ohhnofluffy]

06:05 PM on 11/09/2011

Fetus' are NOT people

[Coffee4Me]

06:21 PM on 11/09/2011

If I need to eat, breathe, and generally stay alive in order for you to live, you are not a person.

[grant06]

05:51 PM on 11/09/2011

No one really wants abortions to be performed, and groups like Planned Parenthood would be the first to advocate for sex education and intelligent birth control, but given or poor state of sex education, the early onset of puberty in young people, and the inane religious demonizing of the reproductive act, we will need safe abortion services for the foreseeable future.