The [CO Personhood Amendment 62] measure would grant fertilized eggs the right to life, liberty, happiness, and due process of law, effectively banning abortion, even in the case of rape or incest, and potentially outlawing IVF treatment, vaginal birth after Caesarean section, and some forms of birth control.
~Jessica Dweck, Slate, October 26
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Huh? What does vaginal birth after a C-section have to do with personhood?
Dear Jessica,
Prove it.
PS
That was quite the hysterical rant.
“The [CO Personhood Amendment 62] measure would … [ban] abortion, even in the case of rape or incest, and potentially outlawing IVF treatment…”
Please Lord…
Babies conceived in rape or incest are no less human than those conceived in a married relationship. If we as a society continue to encourage women to abort these babies by shaming them, they will continue to abort. Is this what pro-choicers prefer?
Huh? Vaginal birth after a C-section? Whuh? What’s she TALKING about? I swear, they pull their “facts” and “arguments” right out of their butts.
What’s the matter with these people?
Yes, Jessica, admitting these are PERSONS is inconvenient. Suck it up, pro-aborts.
maybe this Jessica person went to the same school as that doctor who thinks women reproduce asexually (by claiming personhood would mean that removing a badly diseased ovary would be banned)…..
How do they come up with this stuff, vaginal birth after a c-section. These people are nuts.
I think, maybe, VBAC is considered more risky to the baby and therefore would violate the “person’s” rights by putting it in more danger. I think that’s a stretch.
“fertilized eggs” – no such thing
she should learn some basic biology instead of spouting ignorance.
After that I stopped reading……
Actually, yes, women who refuse to preauthorize a consent form for a C-section are subject to child welfare investigations:
http://advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/blog/2010/08/post.php#more
It isn’t surprising that a woman in labor would be treated like an irrational animal. This is what happens when you treat women as mere holding vessels for babies and not human beings in their own right.
I’ll never understand why anyone thinks VBAC’s are so dangerous. In low risk pregnancies, it can be safer to say, have a VBAC at home, away from risky and unnecessary interventions such as c-sections. And Megan, really, really? It’s kinda sad how little you seem to understand about what most pro-lifers think.
Um, Amanda, I didn’t make up the court case, which criminalized this woman’s actions based out of concern for the baby. And neither is this study false:
http://www.whijournal.com/article/S1049-3867(06)00136-8/abstract
“In an ordinal regression model, the degree of pro-life was the only variable consistently associated with obtaining a court order for the healthy mother–healthy child.” In other words, doctors who would obtain court orders to force women to have c-sections were more likely to be pro-life than doctors who would let women deliver vaginally.
I don’t know why you’d be surprised, AmandaK. From a legal standpoint, the Colorado Personhood amendment privileges the rights of unborn children over a woman’s right to due process and autonomy. If the Personhood amendment sets the stage for criminalization of abortion, then it stands that in other instances where the unborn child’s welfare might be at stake (or “deemed” to be at stake by impatient, $-oriented OBs), the mother would lose say about what happens to her body. If a woman can’t get an abortion after rape, then why would the legal system honor her decision to deliver vaginally, refuse an episiotomy, not receive an epidural, have a home birth, seek out the services of a midwife or doula, etc.? And as we’ve seen, this kind of thing happens all the time. Pregnancy is medicalized because women are deemed too irrational to make competent decisions. It’s the same sexist ideology that fuels pro-life thinking.
In other words, doctors who would obtain court orders to force women to have c-sections were more likely to be pro-life than doctors who would let women deliver vaginally
First of all, taking this info and saying Personhood threatens VBAC is waaaaay more than a stretch.
And “forcing” a woman to have a c-section is probably more a case of wanting to avoid a charge of malpractice due to fetal death and/or uterine rupture. FYI, there’s only a couple drs in my area who will do VBAC cases (for that reason) and they are pro-choice.
I really don’t think that the 6-7 p.m. slot is the place for this kind of advertisement. My eight year old walked into the room and the commercial came on. He sat there and was in horror. This was not the way that I wanted him to learn about abortion. This is a very personal topic and he is just not ready for such graphic topics on television. Where is my son’s choice whether he wanted to view this. I was cooking dinner in the adjoining room and had my head turned. So, I was caught off guard. If you are going to run such a topic on television, put it on after our children go to bed.
Um Kel, you haven’t refuted anything I said. The logic underpinning these scenarios is the same. A doctor’s desire to avoid a malpractice suit, welfare officers taking away a woman’s child because of her refusal to sign off on a c-section pre-authorization, pro-life folks waving signs of aborted babies at clinics–all instances where it is assumed the pregnant woman is vulnerable, irrational, and incapable of making competent decisions.
Is this not the fundamental starting point of pro-life ideology? Pregnant women are supposedly weak and vulnerable to the “abortion industry.” Women can’t be trusted to keep their babies or make good decisions regarding their pregnancies. Hence the need for intervention, whether it be a pro-lifer waving an image of an aborted fetus, or a state official issuing injunctions that pregnant women give birth in the way the doctor/state mandates. So-called pro-choice doctors disrespect the autonomy of laboring women, too. But privileging the fetus’ interests over the mother’s receives an official imprimatur from the pro-life movement. If a zygote is entitled with the rights of a fully-formed person, then a woman will have even less say about her body. She will have to comply with whatever the doctor “says” is in the developing baby’s best interest. If he says VBAC is an option that might result in fetal demise, then the woman will have limited choice in the matter, and you will have more punitive measures taken against women who do not comply.
Why is this a stretch, Kel? This is the law you want to have enacted. There are going to be conflicts of rights and interests. You can’t satisfy everybody. Either zygotes have rights that trump a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body, or zygotes do not have those rights.
Personhood Amendment 62 is going to expose the pro-life movement’s utter BS. Under this ruling, the sale of oral contraceptives in Colorado will need to be banned. And miscarriages will have to become “manslaughter.” This is the logical extension of a law that seeks to criminalize abortion by upholding the personhood of fertilized eggs. If you think this is crazy, then I suggest you take a closer look at what you’re promoting.
For the umpteenth time, get a biology book!!!! A fertilized egg exists in a nano second. An early human being is not floating around being a fertilized egg all week! It’s a zygote, for crying out loud, then an embryo. These are scientific words. Why do pro-abortionists have such a huge problem with science and biology!?!?
I’m sorry but that fertilized egg thing is just the abortionists way of trying to link the early human being with the mother’s body. After the egg is fertilized, creating the zygote, there are now 2 people sharing the space of the mother’s body. This is a temporary condition called pregnancy and it concludes naturally when the mother gives birth to the completely individual human being known as a child, a baby, a whatever else you want to call the HUMAN BEING. These are not tinkertoys or yoyo’s, everyone, these are HUMAN BEINGS. We start out very small. But since we’re small and helpless for a temporary time, the abortionists think we’re easy prey in the womb. Abortion is murder for money. Simple. Now, Megan, for crying out loud, stick to science. YOU were a zygote for a short time. Oh, I know what all you abortionists say, “If my mother had killed me it would have been her choice and that’s ok.” What a crock. Abortion is murder. It kills human beings and traumatized mothers. Everyone who supports abortion supports murder. Everyone who is anti-life is pro-murder.
But privileging the fetus’ interests over the mother’s receives an official imprimatur from the pro-life movement.
Okay, Megan, I’ll repeat this again: the fetus, in the case of an abortion, loses his/her LIFE, while the mother does not. The child has more to lose. Your freaking “rights” in this world do not trump another person’s right to live.
Saying the personhood amendment is a threat to VBACs is utter lunacy. First of all, women have a choice which physician they will see. If a physician doesn’t do VBACs, then she has the “right to choose” another physician. And in the case of a life-threatening emergency (on either the mother’s or child’s part) a c-section can be performed. Zygotes (and blastocysts, and embryos, and fetuses, because they’re HUMANS) should have the right to life because they are human. Killing a human being because you claim to have “bodily autonomy” isn’t sufficient. Miscarriages happen mostly for completely unknown reasons and they are not the same as elective abortions chosen by the mother so she doesn’t have to be inconvenienced. It is highly possible that an exception might be made to allow oral contraceptives. I believe they’re abortifacient (and so do the manufacturers) but taking a birth control pill in an attempt to prevent a pregnancy is not the same as discovering one is pregnant and then choosing to deliberately terminate that life. There is nothing logical about screaming someone’s gonna take away your right to deliver a live child via VBAC if a law banning abortion/instituting personhood is on the books.
FYI, the instant that egg is fertilized, the sperm bursts open and the gametes fuse. Therefore, it’s no longer a “fertilized egg.” It is a human being with its own DNA. Basic biology, Megan. But then, if you went to Ft. Lewis college, then I apologize. Perhaps you think you shed fertilized eggs every month….
“I believe they’re abortifacient (and so do the manufacturers) but taking a birth control pill in an attempt to prevent a pregnancy is not the same as discovering one is pregnant and then choosing to deliberately terminate that life.”
Really? Outcome’s still the same, technically. You can’t start making arbitrary distinctions. Maybe it’s not first degree murder, sure, but taking oral contraceptives should definitely be considered manslaughter, in your worldview. Come on, KelNinekPraxedes. I’d like to see you campaign just as hard for the rights of zygotes as for fetuses. Justice for all those lives lost to the Pill!!
It doesn’t matter if a zygote has its own unique DNA. So what? Means nothing without the use of a woman’s body. All those chromosomes represent future potential, and nothing else, while extant inside her body. Arguing otherwise invites whole hosts of human rights abuses. I’d like to see you argue that Emergency Contraception must be withheld from raped women out of concern for these earliest stages of human life. I’m sure that wouldn’t be traumatizing at all.
An average woman experiences about 25 years of fertility. To think she wouldn’t face an unwanted pregnancy in that time is crazy, Ninek. Most likely she will become pregnant at some time and her body will naturally shed the pregnancy. Life at this stage is inherently unstable, and to argue that women must cultivate each and every zygote represents an incredible insult to her–yes–autonomy. What does it mean for somebody to be human, ninek? Should humans simply be happy for brute existence, or do they have the right to liberty and self-determination? If women must house unwanted pregnancies, then what prevents the government from telling women when and how they will give birth, or what else we must do with our physical person?
I’m too tired to shovel tonight.
i.e. your argument is insane.