State lawmakers in Oklahoma this week took up a piece of legislation that would grant “personhood” status to human embryos. The measure, which was passed by the state Senate, advanced through the House Public Health Committee, despite warnings that it could endanger the lives of women.
Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has furthered his commitment to the pro-life cause, signing a draft version of the Oklahoma Personhood Amendment petition. The ‘fetal personhood’ movement has swept the country in recent months and aims to outlaw abortion by defining life as beginning at the moment of conception.
DENVER— The political battle in Colorado over abortion, women’s healthcare and family planning heated up Monday when lawmakers, activist groups and supporters on opposite sides of the issues took turns rallying on the west steps of the capitol here.
On Tuesday, the Virginia House passed a bill that would declare unborn fetuses people, thus banning abortion and potentially certain forms of contraception and some fertility treatments. This positions Virginia — which now has a Republican super-majority — to become the first state to enact a fetal personhood measure, which supporters hope will lead the Supreme Court to revisit the constitutionality of abortion rights.
Twice as many anti-abortion-rights state laws were passed in 2011 than in 2010, according to a new report by NARAL Pro-Choice America, the nation’s largest abortion-rights policy group. Even more legislation is expected in 2012, NARAL policy experts said during a Thursday press briefing on the 21st edition of “Who Decides? The Status of Women’s Reproductive Rights in the United States.”
Federal presidential-election-year campaigns are heating up in Colorado now that the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts have been updated. Yet, so far, Mike Coffman and Scott Tipton, the Republican representatives of new more-competitive districts Six and Three, have yet to articulate for the record their stands on “personhood,” the hard-line anti-abortion proposition that has become a litmus-test issue in Colorado after having landed on the ballot as an initiative in the last two general elections and after clearing hurdles to speed toward the ballot again this year.
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has struggled to win over social-conservative primary campaign voters, but he recently took up the hard-core anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-stem cell personhood movement, which would grant full citizen rights to fertilized human eggs. It’s a move that will surely doom his chances to win a general election in Colorado, according to First District Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette, head of the congressional pro-choice caucus, and state Democratic Party Chairman Rick Palacio.
Colorado voters in 2008 and 2010 roundly rejected “personhood” initiatives that aimed to grant full legal rights to human eggs from the moment of fertilization. The national organization behind the idea, Personhood USA, then took its campaign to Mississippi, betting the state’s large bloc of religious voters might put it over the top and set the stage to challenge Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973.
The Montana secretary of state has approved a “Personhood” initiative for signature gathering. Personhood measures have cropped up across the country — including in Florida — in an attempt to ban abortion and some forms of birth control.
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