The Oppressed Little Fetus

North Dakota lawmakers passed a Personhood Constitutional Amendment initiative on Thursday that would amend the state’s constitution to give legal rights and protections to human embryos. If the ballot initiative passes the House, North Dakota voters will decide on it during the 2014 elections.

“We are intending that it be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, since Scalia said that the Supreme Court is waiting for states to raise a case,” state Sen. Margaret Sitte (R), the sponsor of the personhood initiative, told HuffPost.

Can’t we all just let personhood bills die yet? Embryos are not autonomous people in charge of their own bodies and futures. No person, embryo or otherwise, has the right to dictate the actions and choices of any body else. Embryos can’t even vote.

This is not a difficult concept.

vochoice:

Are you ready to stand up for the rights of the “one-celled human embryos?” Well, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) is, and he’s got a bill to prove it.

Now that Congress is in session again, anti-choice bills are popping up left and right (but just in the House, of course, because that’s the only place they can get votes). The latest? He’s co-sponsoring a federal “personhood” amendment, because if the trouncing of anti-choice politicians across the country taught the House Republicans anything, it’s that Americans simply love debating abortion.

Fresh off his invite to headline the anti-choice, anti-woman Susan B. Anthony List’s annual gala, Ryan is paying more attention to his second favorite Americans—the single celled ones—with the assistance of bill sponsor Congressman Paul Broun (R-GA).

Via Huffington Post:

The personhood bill, first introduced in 2011 by Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and reintroduced by Broun last week, specifies that a “one-celled human embryo,” even before it implants in the uterus to create a pregnancy, should be granted “all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” Similar legislation has been rejected by voters in multiple states, including the socially conservative Mississippi, because legal experts have pointed out that it could outlaw some forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization as well as criminalize abortion at all stages.

Broun said in a statement that a zygote’s right to life should be “defended vigorously and at all costs.”

“As a physician, I know that human life begins with fertilization, and I remain committed to ending abortion in all stages of pregnancy,” he said. “I will continue to fight this atrocity on behalf of the unborn, and I hope my colleagues will support me in doing so.”

Ryan did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment about his support for the bill, which has 17 co-sponsors.

Let’s just be clear that there is no such thing as a “one-celled” embryo, because the embryonic stage follows first on the zygote or fertilized egg, which develops into a blastocyst, which then develops into an embryo… and is not “one-celled.” But, you know… Republicans, science… pffft.

Sometimes I wish I was a single-celled human so I could get a little love from the congressional GOP, too.

stfuconservatives:

On Monday, Virginia state Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Prince William County) filed a “personhood” bill, which states that life begins at conception and proposes to give constitutional rights to a fertilized egg. The bill proposes to give “unborn children at every stage of development all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of the Commonwealth.

I totally missed this…because it NEVER seems to end.

-R

Starting to think that Mississippi voting down this bullshittery was just like, a dare to every other state trying for the personhood amendment. It’s like, “The Race to Personhood: Who’s state has the most assholes?”