Anti-choice extremists never take their eye off the prize: making abortion illegal in the United States.
Right now, they have their sights set on Mississippi. This Tuesday, Mississippians will go to the polls and vote on Initiative 26, a so-called "personhood" ballot measure.
By defining "personhood" from the beginning of fertilization, these measures are designed to outlaw abortion care. Initiative 26 is so extreme that were it to pass and go into effect, it would ban abortion care without exception: even in cases of rape or incest, and even when a woman's life or health is in danger.
Backers of the ballot measure also admit that it is so broad that it could outlaw some of the most common methods of birth control. Think about the birth-control pill and IUD becoming illegal if this measure goes into effect.
Even Haley Barbour, Mississippi's anti-choice governor, expressed concerns about the ramifications Initiative 26 would have on in-vitro fertilization and treatment for women with ectopic pregnancies. Although he eventually voted for the measure, Gov. Barbour raised important questions that no one will forget.
It's making headlines in the presidential race, as former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) recently endorsed the concept of a constitutional ban on abortion care that's based on the "personhood" model.
What's happening in Mississippi is not just about Mississippi. We are already tracking multiple anti-choice ballot measures throughout the country. It's the War on Women you might not have heard of yet.
The anti-choice groups behind Initiative 26 are pushing similar ballot measures for 2012 in Florida, Ohio, Montana, and Nevada.
In 2012, Montana voters will face a parental-involvement measure that jeopardizes the health and safety of young women who, for fear of violence or in cases of incest, cannot turn to their parents.
In California, anti-choice forces are collecting signatures for ballot measures that also would impose a dangerous parental-involvement mandate and mandatory 48-hour delay on young women who seek abortion care.
And in Massachusetts, anti-choice groups are pushing for a voter referendum that would ban insurance coverage of abortion care.
Our nation's pro-choice majority must respond with force and determination whenever and wherever these attacks arise.
In fact, voters have already beaten back some of these extreme ballot initiatives.
Colorado voters twice defeated "personhood" measures in their state by resounding margins.
Voters in California and Oregon rejected dangerous parental-involvement mandates. Californians have said no three times: in 2005, 2006, and 2008.
And in 2006 and 2008, South Dakotans decisively rejected abortion bans.
At the same time, we have seen some setbacks: Alaska voters approved a parental-involvement mandate in 2010 that puts young women's health and safety at risk.
The lesson here is that voting matters -- not just for the right candidates, but voting against dangerous ballot measures, too. These measures restrict women's freedom and privacy just as much as any anti-choice politician can.
My challenge to you is to bring up what's happening in Mississippi and across the country with your friends -- including people with whom you've never discussed abortion. Starting the conversation is the first step in helping connect the personal with the political. If they value women's freedom and privacy, then they have to speak out against measures like the one in Mississippi.
Remember, an attack on a woman's right to choose in one state is an attack on a woman's right to choose everywhere.
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Lisa Sharon Harper and David Innes: Christian Views on Social Issues: Abortion
Secondly, a viable foetus is one which will continue to develop inside the mother's womb. Children who have been born continue to be dependent on their mothers. Killing a child outside of the womb is murder, but inside the womb is not. Even though in both cases the child is dependent on the mother. Go figure.
Thirdly, abortions. Some abortions are difficult cases - to save the mother's life in a pregnancy which has gone wrong, or something like that. But most abortions occur because the people involved in sex haven't taken the trouble to get their contraception sorted out - they are simply immature. Their crassly lax attitude to contraception is then followed by a demand to kill the child that they have created. True?
Fourthly, as a man there is a limit to what I can do with my body. I can't beat someone up because I feel like it, and "don't dare tell me what I can and cannot do with my body" isn't like to cut any ice when the police turn up.
Take all the money they're using to appeal abortion, and put into courses to help the self esteem of preteen and teenage girls. Let the teen age ladies know that life is more than having babies, and their bodies are not toys for boys. When girls realize they have control over their bodies and they decide when a to have sex and not because some boy says I love lets screw. then abortion will become obsolete. But hey, why would the Christan right allow any women to have self respect and en-power her to control Her LIFE.
Whatever else abortion may be, it's not primarily an issue loose morals amongst girls with low self-esteem.
That said, this so-called personhood thing in Mississippi is also deceitful, attempting to 'win' the debate on abortion by just outlawing it under the table. It's rather like how gun control advocates failed to do what they wanted against firearms themselves, so they began pushing for legislation on ammunition instead. I hate these kind of dirty pool politics.
There should be no doubt that these forces wish to destroy democracy, and the economy, put in place a theocratic dictatorship, and take the country back to a dark ages primitive condition.
If you've aborted, don't you ever wonder what that life would have been?
The truth is, if you're opposed to abortion you shouldn't have one. And you should mind your own business. It's no concern of yours when and if your neighbor becomes a parent. Worry about your own affairs, and let other women deal with their own as is best for them.
If you succeed, it will not reduce the number of abortions in America, it will increase the number of young women dying from backyard abortions.
At the same time the people who are trying to outlaw abortion, are also attempting to defund contraception being made available to poor women through planned parenthood.
Nobody else other than pregnant women is required to donate parts of their body to anyone. Let alone to be attached to them for nine months.
How would it be if ANY other demographic were required to give up the right to bodily autonomy while everyone else kept theirs? How would it be if all young men under 30 were required to donate organs or to be hooked up to dialysis patients for nine months to support them? Suddenly the world might give more of a crap.
When legislation is this broad and all encompassing, then if you can imagine another outcome of it, then it is probably something which could be legislated!
Think about all the eggs that get thrown in the trash when women of child bearing capability have their ovaries removed?
From the jewels of masturbation that end up in the laundry, to eggs imprisoned behind a tubal ligation... shouldn't we protect all ingredients of potential life?
The bible clearly states that any sexual act should be an act of procreation and I'd imagine that ALL ingredients themselves should be protected, even regulated if the claim is that all potential life and actual life are equivalent!
To look on the bright side, this could be a new technology market!
Can you imagine a sensor that is installed on a man's penis to make sure that any, uh, ejaculate has an egg within arms length?
Kind of like that football rule that differentiates between intentional grounding or incomplete pass? Gotta have a "receiver" in the area of the throw?
Imagine the medical paperwork that will be required if a doctor recommends an oophorectomy in a woman who is not post-menopausal?
I could go on...
I also don't understand how our fellow citizens don't get it that we are essentially legislating that a woman has no other choice if she becomes pregnant that she MUST continue with the pregnancy... as though the medical condition of pregnancy is no big deal, when just being pregnant, and that end game of delivery still kills American women today.
In the US in 2005, the maternal death rate was 11 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
The idea that we would legislatively tell American women that they cannot prevent pregnancy via the usual forms of birth control, AND if they do become pregnant, they have no other choice than to take it all the way to end... at a time when more women in this country have had their access to affordable health care!
So, if we edict that a woman who becomes pregnant HAS no choice, even if she fears that medical state of pregnancy, don't we also have to have legislation on the books to ensure that the man who got her pregnant sees this pregnancy through, until that "outcome" is a tax paying adult?
Or are we just putting all the responsibility on the woman?
Like Barney Fife said: Nip it. Nip it in the bud.
The theocrats would have no separation of church and state. Remember Christine O'Donnell, defeated for senate in Delaware, but honestly debated the concept. She said the founding fathers didn't intend for church and state to be separate.
The theocrats would have us all be xian. It's their great commission to make disciples of all of us. And if they can't get us to believe like them, they will legislate for all of us to act like them. Whether it's gay marriage or abortion, we must conform to their religiouis beliefs.
The theocrats are the biggest danger to American democracy and individual liberty in our age.