First off, this isn't a post about abortion. It's about how the personhood movement is dangerous even if you take abortion out of the debate. According to my friend Liz,

More than 55% of voters in Mississippi yesterday rejected the state’s ‘personhood’ initiative—a development that certainly bodes well for reproductive rights in this country, and gives me a little more hope about our collective sanity, as well.

What interested me about this issue (aside from the fact that I possess a uterus), was the way some of the groups fighting the Mississippi amendment were approaching the issue. The group Parents against MS 26 pointed out that the personhood movement, "has far-reaching effects on infertility treatment, contraception, and women's physical health."


Jessica Valenti cites several examples in her column in the Washington Post, including this one:

In 1996, when Laura Pemberton in Florida refused a recommended C-section because she did not want surgery, the sheriff and the state’s attorney went to her house while she was in labor and took her to a hospital, where a lawyer had been appointed for her fetus. (Pemberton was not given representation.) According to Pemberton and legal documents, she was subsequently forced to undergo the C-section against her will.

Sarah Brown from the National Campaign to prevent Teen and unplanned pregnancy posed a common question: "Isn’t it clear and obvious that contraception is preferable to abortion?" I think she's giving these people too much credit. Anyone who has read up on right wing religious extremists knows that they actually do think contraception is just as bad.