If the anti-choice movement has its way, the moment one sperm eats its way through an egg's outer shell would be the last moment in human development that wouldn't be covered by the Constitution. Unsurprisingly, it's a rather lucrative racket.
Wendy Norris at RH Reality Check reports that the various "personhood" amendments popping up around the country -- which would define fertilized eggs as "people" for the purpose of criminalizing abortion -- are a major moneymaker for the anti-choice movement.
In just five short years, the primary movers and shakers in the absolutist anti-abortion/anti-choice movement seeking to promote the "personhood" of zygotes (the single cell that forms after a sperm fertilizes an egg) have amassed nearly $58 million in tax-deductible contributions for their cause.
In fact, that's only the money amassed by five anti-choice, pro-personhood groups: the American Life League, Colorado Right to Life, Human Life International, the Life Legal Defense Fund and Students for Life. There are plenty of other anti-choice groups that continue to raise money to push straight anti-abortion legislation, blockade clinics, harass women's health care providers (as well as their employees and contractors), operate crisis pregnancy centers to guilt women into carrying their pregnancies to term and disseminate misleading information about pregnancy, fetal development and abortion.
And while these organizations continue to rake in the dough -- and, in many cases, spend it on lucrative salary packages for their leaders while decrying the salaries of women's health care providers that perform abortions -- there are no apparent plans to restore to Dr. Leroy Carhart the protection of federal marshalls. With the news that Carhart won't be under federal protection, Operation Rescue will use some of its hard-earned cash to protest at Dr. Carhart's clinic on August 29th, according to Jen Nedeau on Change.org. But I'm sure that timing is just a coincidence.
Originally posted at Air America.