Imagine a "Where's Waldo?" illustration where the page is filled with isolated fetuses and Waldo is a pregnant woman who is nowhere to be found.
That picture is exactly what so-called "fetal personhood" initiatives intend to do: separate the pregnant woman from her fetus, thereby making the woman -- her experiences, her rights -- virtually impossible to find. These initiatives squeeze the woman out of the picture, making her irrelevant and taking away her humanity.
The fetus is not separate from the pregnant woman. Certainly, the woman and the fetus are distinct and therefore enjoy a different host of rights, but the two aren't separate. Separating the two, as anti-choice advocates want to do, is detrimental to the fetus, the woman and the family.
Right now in Colorado, anti-choice advocates have put Amendment 62 on this November's ballot. The amendment reads:
"As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the term "person" shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being."
While the language may seem benign, it's not. Giving rights from the beginning of biological development -- or at fertilization, as the 2008 ballot measure read -- would erode the rights of the pregnant woman. Certainly, the right to abortion could be obliterated, but experts also suggest that this language, if law, could make the use of contraception and even miscarriage illegal.
It simply doesn't make any sense.
A so-called "fetal personhood" initiative may be as frustrating and mind-boggling as a Where's Waldo puzzle, but it is no game. It ignores the lived experience and takes away the rights of women, plain and simple. And there's no telling where it could end. Let's put these so-called fetal personhood initiatives to rest and make sure the woman stays in the picture.
Follow Kierra Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChoiceUSA
Is there any chance you could organize a ballot measure in Colorado that states my below post in essence? Basically doing an end run around the "personhood" crowd such that even if they get their BS passed, it presents no leverage against choice?
We defeat the personhood bs by good margins every time they bring it up, but they keep bringing it up. Rather than fight the battle over and over lets get an amendment out that demotivates them. Something with text like:
"In no situation does one person's right to life supersede another person's right to bodily autonomy. Consent to bodily donations is always assumed to be denied when an individual is mentally incapacitated or deceased unless the individual has documented a preference to the contrary."
Get that on the books and there is no point in the theocratic yoyo's putting this amendment up every election.
The already alive, living, breathing person is MORE important than something living inside of her.
Unbelievable.
It is a stealth war against all women. The prize, the goal of this war, is who gets to control a woman's body. Is this right going to belong to each woman or is it going to belong to everyone else; the doctors and the politicians and the religions and the men and other women? This begs the question... should women really lose their status as human beings, lose all their basic rights, when they become pregnant?
The argument, the excuse, that this control over a woman is justified because she carries a 'potential human' or 'fetus' or an 'unborn baby' or an 'innocent life' is a vicious, vile and wholly delusional abstract of what 'pro-life' is all about.
Pro-life is about taking care of and ensuring the quality of life of every human currently born. When the horrible suffering of millions of children and adults due to wars, famines, slavery, et.al. has ended; when the count of all these miseries is under 100,000 instead of over 300,000,000, only then should any of the current 'pro-lifers' dare to open their mouth.
Women need to be alarmed at these efforts to gain control of their reproductive lives by people who neither like or care about them.