The Huffington Post's Laura Bassett appeared on Current TV's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" on Tuesday to discuss Mississippi's Personhood amendment. The amendment, which voters rejected on Tuesday, would have given undeveloped zygotes "personhood" status.
"Even among Democrats and pro-choice lawmakers, I think they're afraid of coming out and saying they oppose this amendment because it's being painted as a simple pro-choice vs. pro-life issue," she said, adding that most Mississippians are pro-life.
Though polling suggested the vote would be close, the amendment, Proposition 26, was struck down on Tuesday. The vote was 58 to 42 percent.
Bassett reported that the amendment would have criminalized abortion, banned intrauterine devices and some forms of birth control, and possibly affected the legality of stem cell research and in vitro fertilization. Doctors could be sued for trying to save a woman with an ectopic pregnancy.
The amendment also could have challenged Roe v. Wade and possibly other Supreme Court decisions on abortion and birth control.
Three GOP lawmakers in Congress have introduced "personhood" bills, and 63 House Republicans signed onto one bill mirroring the Mississippi amendment.
Dear friends
Three weeks after conception the brain has divided, other nervous systems continue to form, and the cardiovascular system begins to operate with the heart taking its first beat. Though humans are tiny at this stage of three weeks, a water bear is microscopic and nonetheless it is a water bear and dwarfed relative to a fetus at three weeks. Remember, at 22 weeks, an embryo has survived outside her mother's uterus. Her name is Amelia Taylor, and she was 10 ounces at 9 inches.
What is wrong with people who want to extinguish life at three weeks? Is there anyone, in the scientific community, who will deny that a human embryo is alive, and if it is alive, what kind of a life is it? Is it a plant? Is it other than human? Do human beings born mute, retarded, handicapped, majorly deformed, or severely premature get labeled nonhuman because they are underdeveloped?
Empirically speaking, unborn humans die because of self-centered reasons and a perpetual desire to live unrestrained. Is this not the same behavior that has created a class of citizens so blind and greedy that they have lost touch with their representatives who have seized upon the opportunity to do the self-same thing to them, that men and women would have free reign to continue to do to the unborn, harm them for personal gain? [1 of 3]
It is shameful how this nation advocates taking life by minimizing the value of life. I will not be graphic, but is there anything more violent. If a woman is impregnated against her will, there is an innocent developing human being inside her, but calling conception a fertilized egg is self-propagandizing and an uneducated position.
Using incorrect terms is a way of conning others and oneself by avoiding dealing with life's realities. The psychological technique is well known. Breed confusion by insisting on false information and the truth becomes skewed, and, likewise, when attempting to escape guilt, who better to lie to than our consciences and those who will benefit from the behavior? [2 of 3]
Who will save those bent on self-destruction? Please, tell me?
Sincerely,
Joseph C. Carbone III [3 of 3]