On Tuesday, Mississippi trounced a ballot initiative that would have declared in the state constitution a human egg a person the moment an egg is fertilized. It was well they did. And if advocates working to put a similar initiative on the Ohio ballot succeed, Ohioans would have good reason as well to reject it as decisively.
The “personhood” initiative is an extreme maneuver in a nationwide campaign to negate the law of the land protecting the right to abortion. The strategy, rolled out by the Colorado-based Personhood USA, is to put on state ballots constitutional amendments that define every human egg as a person from the moment it is fertilized, granting the egg all the rights and protections provided to people under the law.
In effect, the definition would make it a violation of the law to interfere with the development of the “person” at any stage, from implantation to birth. The definition would bar contraceptives that prevent fertilized eggs from lodging in the womb, plus morning-after medications, procedures such as in-vitro fertilization that discard scores of fertilized eggs and, of course, abortions.
Ohio already is a staging ground for the abortion battle. In October, Mike DeWine, the state attorney general, rejected language for a petition drive submitted by Personhood Ohio, concluding that the summary for the proposed amendment did not represent a “fair and truthful” statement. Undeterred, the group promises to fix the language and get the go-ahead to collect the 385,000 or so valid signatures it needs to qualify for the 2012 ballot.
Personhood initiatives have failed twice in Colorado since 2008. As critics of the Mississippi measure argued, it went too far, denying access to abortion for rape, incest and a mother’s health. And lurking beneath the concept is a legal minefield — ranging widely across the laws, including health care and taxation, that apply to persons.
