Okla. high court strikes down personhood amendment

[shawn703]

Source: New England Cable News

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma Supreme Court has ruled that an initiative petition that would grant "personhood" rights to human embryos is unconstitutional.

The state's highest court handed down the decision Monday on a proposed constitutional amendment that would define a fertilized human egg as a person.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights filed a protest with the Supreme Court on behalf of several Oklahoma doctors and residents. The protest says the measure would have far-reaching implications that trump the rights of women.

The Supreme Court's decision says the proposal "is clearly unconstitutional," citing a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the right to an abortion. The court says the petition is void and ordered it stricken


Read more: http://www.necn.com/04/30/12/Okla-high-court-strikes-down-personhood-/landing_politics.html?&apID=39e8d556275d4a26b421708f7344b474

[Dawson Leery]

1. As embryos are NOT people.

[duhneece]

5. Acorns are not oak trees

Eggs are not chickens....
Caterpillars are not butterflies....

Potentials. They are all potentials that, with luck & the right conditions may grow into something else.

[jerseyjack]

14. "Potential ain't worth shit. Ya gotta do it." Bukowski

[leftyohiolib]

6. but corporations are go f igure

[freshwest]

15. Yes, indeed. The insanity grows.

Books are trash. Corporations are people. Tents are terrorism. Pepper Spray soon to be declared a vegetable. #OWS

[Kber]

7. There was a learned group of Rabbis who once studied the issue and came to the same conclusion

They noted that in the Torah (or "Old Testament" as some Christians refer to it) that there are many places in which the penalty for murder or even causing accidental death, (for example, if you neglect to properly pen your bull and he gets out and gores your neighbor) is death. This hold true if the victim is a man, a woman, a child, a king or a slave.

However, if you hit a pregnant woman and cause her to miscarry, your penalty is substantial, but you don't bite the big one. The reason, they concluded, is that a person isn't a person until he / she draws his / her first breath.

Therefore, if a pregnancy is dangerous to a woman's health the doctor is instructed to terminate the pregnancy because the potential life is not yet as "important" as the actual life of the living, breathing woman. They even determined that some women, say victims of rape, might be so upset at a pregnancy that they contemplate suicide and that, in those cases, an abortion was also required. (Note: not "permitted" but actually "required".)

Thing is, they reached this conclusion about 2000 years ago when they were editing the Talmud. Go figure.

[cosmicone]

8. Actually,

Deuteronomy explicitly says a fetus is not a person "until blood flows through its veins" - which happens around 20-22 weeks of gestation.

[Kber]

18. Interesting.

[sakabatou]

2. Huzzuh!

[freshwest]

3. +1. Whatever that means. Sounds like Hurray!

[sakabatou]

12. It's the same thing.

[rocktivity]

4. CUE THE VONAGE THEME!

And it sounds like we're batting a thousand!


rocktivity

[NinetySix]

9. One of these days...

... the authors of these personhood statutes and the authors of the anti-abortion statutes and the authors of the anti-immigration statutes are going to succeed, only to find they've created a monster.

Citizens of other countries will get tourist visas, then visit the US two weeks before the planned conception of their child, who will be sired shortly afterward, in the comforts of their own foreign home. They will then will proceed to immigrate to the US on the grounds that a) life begins two weeks before conception, b) that the beginning of citizenship coincides with the beginning of personhood, and thus c) their anchor baby, born elsewhere, is therefore legally a US citizen.

And then I will laugh my heartiest laugh at the follies that are the delusions of right-wing "solutions" to the "problems" plaguing Amuhrca.

[calimary]

10. Even in Oklahoma there's a trace of reasonable thinking.

How 'bout that?

And yeah, an acorn isn't an oak tree any more than a microscopic mass of differentiating cells is a person.

[shawn703]

11. I was actually surprised to find out

That a large majority of the justices on the court were appointed by Democratic governors. 6 of the 9 from Brad Henry. I thought they were more "red" than that.

[AlbertCat]

13. The adults have spoken

Because apparently in OK and other red states, one may be a person, but not an adult, after being born.... or even going thru puberty.

[truthisfreedom]

16. It boggles my imagination that tax dollars are wasted on these grandstanding measures where

politicians bend over backward to try to prove they're further to the right than anyone else, knowing full well what they're actually doing is pandering to their base by blowing huge amounts of tax revenue on utter nonsense. They people who elect these nutjobs deserve what they get, but they know not what they do. Imagine how much that money would have helped out-of-work people in their state had it been spent on the people rather than forcing through this obviously unconstitutional law.

The lawmakers and governor should be required to return all of the salary they earned while wasting the people's time.

[mopinko]

17. +1,000,000,000

they know full well that they will be struck down.
besides, they are rich, their wives, daughters and girlfriends will always be able to get one somewhere.