The North Dakota House has passed a "personhood" bill that outlaws abortion by declaring that life begins with fertilized eggs. In the next few weeks, the Senate will vote. If passed into law, this will be the first state to "protect the rights of all its citizens from their biological beginning." North Dakota may be followed by 15 other states that are also "pursuing personhood legislation."
The intent of personhood advocates extends beyond banning abortion to also dictating the role and use of family planning, including fertilization, contraception, stem cells and possibly child rearing. A fuller picture emerges when considering a companion bill that was also scheduled for a vote on Monday but then was delayed. This companion bill is about "crimes against born-alive children" and "crimes of dismemberment and torture."
HB 1445 (the egg bill) (pdf file) defines a human being as an "individual living member of the species of homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation." The egg bill also requires doctors, as part of informed consent, to advise women that the "abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." The North Dakota Catholic Conference supports the bill because it will "give women the scientific truth about abortion."
The sponsor of the egg bill has been trying to spin that this is an inconsequential measure that the public need not worry about. According to the sponsor, this measure does "not automatically ban abortion." It simply answers the question of when life begins and leaves the rest in the hands of existing laws...and also the upcoming torture bill.
Personhood advocates are trying to establish the legal framework that they believe will reverse Roe v. Wade, where the Court stated that if a fetus is a person or has "personhood," then the "appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment." The court noted that back then there was no case that "could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment."
In the 1980s, President Reagan picked up this personhood language to issue his proclamation declaring the "unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death, and I do proclaim, ordain, and declare that I will take care that the Constitution and laws of the United States are faithfully executed for the protection of America's unborn children."
One goal of the personhood advocates is to define life as beginning when a woman’s egg is fertilized by a man’s sperm in order to overrule Roe v. Wade. While the egg bill’s sponsor kept denying that this measure would ban abortion, the "true goal" of the law to challenge Roe was revealed during House debate of this egg measure. These crazies don’t care that if this measure becomes law, then the state may have to spend $5-8 million dollars to defend in court.
However, if a fertilized egg is a human being, then a fetus cannot be legally aborted without risking murder charges. Indeed, "it would be murder to deliberately destroy a fertilized egg." "Opponents of the tactic argue that the proposed law’s overly broad language could also outlaw reproductive health care, contraception, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research that involves fertilized eggs."
I have not heard a lot of right wingers criticizing Bush’s torture of prisoners, yet torture is now part of their spin in the family planning context. The right wingers characterized President Obama’s termination of the Mexico City policy by restoring US funding for international family-planning groups as promoting the torture of unborn children.
The language in the torture bill makes it clear that abortion, which is compared to slavery, is banned:
Because all preborn children are persons, no abortion performed with specific intent is legal. A direct abortion is always performed with the specific intent to bring death to a preborn child; it is a deprivation of the right to life and the right to the equal protection of the law and is the ultimate manifestation of the involuntary servitude of one human being to another.
The language in the torture bill makes it clear that the measures are intended to reach beyond abortion. The torture bill mandates that the state "afford the equality and inherent rights guaranteed to individuals" in the State Constitution "to all human beings, including the preborn, partially born, born alive, and born alive who reenter the womb." Human being is defined as "any organism, including the single-cell human embryo, irrespective of the method of reproduction, who possesses a genome specific for and consistent with an individual member of the human species."
This companion bill provides a penalty for torture inflicted on another human being when the torture does not cause death (pdf file):
Torture - Penalty.
- A person is guilty of an offense if that person intentionally inflicts excruciating pain on another human being, as defined in section 1 of this Act, without causing the death of the other human being.
- The offense is a class C felony, except if the victim is a born alive child, as defined in section 1 of this Act, the offense is a class B felony.
Given that the first measure defines a fertilized egg as a human being, there are numerous implications and unanswered questions flowing from both measures.
A Democrat was concerned about practical application in terms of frozen human embryos where the parents make the decision. When she asked the egg bill’s sponsor what is the difference between fertilization and conception, he responded that he does not think there is any difference. How does this impact embryos waiting for implantation that are cryo-preserved in fertility clinics? What about stem cell research?
Will it be illegal for a doctor to prescribe contraceptives that prevent a fertilized egg from implanting? What about hormonal birth control measures, like birth control pills or in-vitro fertilization?
The torture bill immunizes women from criminal prosecution for abortion, thus indicating that if murder charges are filed against anyone, it will be the doctors. However, if a fertilized egg has the same rights as a child, could a woman be prosecuted for child abuse or negligence if she miscarries? What if a woman has one drink during a pregnancy that causes medical issues? This measure also "threatens doctors who must treat a woman with an ectopic or tubal pregnancy, a situation that can cause a woman to bleed to death."
Just in case women were not clear about their status, the torture bill includes legislative findings stating that the preborn child’s right trump the mother’s right:
The right to life is the paramount right of a person. The right to life is a more fundamental right of a preborn child than the mother's right to liberty or pursuit of happiness, which does not include the right to kill other people. In no way does a child's right to life interfere with a mother's right to life.