Well North Dakota might just beat you to it...
The North Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill this week that will ban more than just abortion. Read HB 1572.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF NORTH DAKOTA:
SECTION 1. References to individual, person, or human being - Legislative intent. For purposes of interpretation of the constitution and laws of North Dakota, it is the intent of the legislative assembly that an individual, a person, when the context indicates that a reference to an individual is intended, or a human being includes any organism with the genome of homo sapiens.
SECTION 2. STATE TO DEFEND CHALLENGE. The legislative assembly, by concurrent resolution, may appoint one or more of its members, as a matter of right and in the legislative member's official capacity, to intervene to defend this Act in any case in which this Act's constitutionality is challenged.
Wow. Follow me over the fold for an explanation of just how crazy this is.
WOW!
This bill actually passed our State House.
Sometimes you wonder if these guys have any clue what they're talking about. The reason that legislators used this language in the bill was that they thought this would be compatible somehow with Roe v. Wade. Here's Dave Ruby(R-Minot), the sponsor of the bill explaining why this convoluted legislation will be compatible with Roe V. Wade.
"This is the exact language that's required by Roe vs. Wade. It stipulated that before a challenge can be made, we have to identify when life begins, and that's what this does."
That may be true, but it throws a huge monkey wrench into the system. First off Nadya Suleman(who a number of my pro-life friends call crazy for having all 8 fertilized eggs implanted into her) would be normal, in fact anyone that did not implant all embryos into their uterus that were fertilized would be guilty of murder. Anyone that used Plan B would be a murderer, not to mention the issue of giving full constitutional rights to an embryo.
Does that mean that your birthday is 9 months earlier now? That would be my interpretation of it. How does that affect drinking laws? What about the retirement age? Voting? Tobacco use? Does this mean that dads have to pay child support? What about Social Security Survivor benefits? Do those now end when you are 17 years and 3 months old?
Is freezing an embryo now child abuse or torture?
What if a woman has a molar pregnancy? That almost immediately means that the woman needs to perform an abortion in order to save her life. 15 women for every 10,000 pregnancies would be dead if this legislation passed. Not to mention every other case that a woman's health is threatened by continuing with a pregnancy. A strict reading of this could say that even if the fetus had no chance of being carried to term that it could not be aborted. We don't have assisted suicide laws in this country.
What makes this bill even more absurd is Section 2. It allows the legislature to appoint whoever they want to defend this bill. Since Wayne Stenehjem(North Dakota's Attorney General) probably doesn't want to go to the bat and do his constitutional duty in this case, the legislature will just act extraconstitutionally and appoint someone(likely Dave Ruby or some such person) that will defend it in front of the courts, where it will be sliced up six ways to Sunday.
It is impossible for the courts to take this law seriously. With all the legal implications of such a definition I highly doubt it would be possible for such a bill would pass muster with any serious jurist. I could not see Anthony Kennedy voting in favor of this legal monkey wrench. You might even see Roberts and dare I say Scalia voting with the left here just to avoid the legal mess that this would create.
In all reality though, it would be unlikely that this legislation will be signed into law. The State Senate has a much more even split. Republicans have a 3 seat majority in a 47-seat body(25-22). There are also a lot more moderates in the Senate than in the house. The moderate Democrats will earn a hit on their 100% pro-life ratings though in order to stop a BS bill from passing. If Republicans want to pass a bill banning abortions then they should introduce a bill that bans abortions, not one that will throw the courts into a slew of cases about a new definition of life.
That's the ND GOP though...