I'm posting this, in part, to add on to Irishwitch's post on the impact of overturning Roe v. Wade. Coloradans will awake tomorrow to an interesting state of affairs facing us down in the 2008 election. The Dobson fundamentalists from Colorado Springs are giddy with the prospect that their legal maneuvering will create a template to outlaw abortion in Colorado, in spite of Roe v. Wade.
Today, the Colorado Supreme Court allowed their ballot initiative to go forward on the 2008 ballot.
This would be excellent satire if it weren't so sadly, sadly true.
If approved by voters, the measure would give fertilized eggs the state constitutional protections of inalienable rights, justice and due process.
The change would not be to Colorado's statutes (civil or criminal laws), but to Colorado's State Constitution. This would be the Religious Right end-run around Roe v. Wade. Roe is predicated on the mother's right to medical privacy and and attempt, thus far, to legislate around Roe has met with some pretty stiff resistance from the U.S. Supreme Court.
But this approach, giving legal personhood status to a zygote, a mere undistinguished bundle of cells, would make the whole Roe argument a moot point. Abortion would become "murder"the killing of a "person"and justify any intrusion into the sphere of medical privacy as part of a criminal investigation.
And I guess that means we might see cases like this in Colorado now.
What other consequences would this change have?