ACLU - Voters to Personhood: Stick a Fork In It. You’re Done.

[Oilwellian]

This year, voters have overwhelmingly rejected personhood initiatives sending messages to personhood proponents, as in: ‘over.’ ‘Finito.’ Not interested. The fat lady has sung and your idea is a loser.

You would have thought the writing was on the wall. Last November, voters in Mississippi decisively defeated a personhood initiative which, if passed, would have amended the state Constitution to grant legal rights to fertilized eggs, and in the process ban many forms of hormonal contraception and in-vitro fertilization, not to mention all abortions – without exceptions. Mississippians resoundingly rejected that proposal by a 16- point margin. And that was in Mississippi, arguably the most conservative state in the nation.

Apparently, the message wasn’t clear enough. Instead of realizing that this extreme proposal would not gain traction anywhere, personhood proponents announced their intention to get proposals on the ballot in not one, but one dozen states this year. But as in Mississippi, voters weren’t buying what they were selling and they fell well short of their mark. Voters across the country—in Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, Mississippi (again), Montana, Nevada, Arkansas, Florida and California—all declined to sign petitions in large enough numbers to even put the question on their ballots this fall. And that’s not including the states where politicians tried to pass personhood legislation—that too went nowhere (I’m looking at you Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin).

http://www.aclu.org/blog/reproductive-freedom/voters-personhood-stick-fork-it-youre-done

This is so encouraging!

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R