Gualberto Garcia Jones
Anti-abortion ‘personhood’ measures shrink the rights of women
Eight months pregnant, confused and suffering psychological disorders, Jessica Clyburn jumped from a fifth story window in South Carolina. According to the media, she had attempted unsuccessfully to commit suicide. According to the District Attorneys office, she had committed murder.
“Clyburn survived but suffered a stillbirth as a result of the fall. She was arrested on homicide charges and is still being held without bail,” attorney Lynn M. Paltrow, founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women told the Colorado Independent.
Personhood initiative lining up friends and foes
A version of the anti-abortion initiative soundly defeated by Colorado voters in 2008 is making its way to the 2010 ballot, this time reworked as an “egg-as-a-person” initiative. This new version would move the legal definition of a person further back into the reproductive cycle, granting cells the full spectrum of citizen rights. Opposition groups, including Colorado genetic and fertilization researchers, say the law would have spiraling consequences, that it would put women at risk and freeze current work in medicine and reproduction.







