Like many of you, I've been scratching my head over Mississippi's proposed "personhood" constitutional amendment, mixed by Tony Perkins' Family Research Council and half-baked to perfection (as in perfect failure) in Colorado.
The FRC's one-tiny-size-fits-all attempt to end run Roe v. Wade defines as a "person," i.e. someone afforded all the protections of the US Constitution, its amendments and amplifications by courts since our republic began, any fertilized egg.
Opponents of the measure have debated numerous implications of declaring quickened-this-everning eggs actual US citizens. Louise Brown would assume the status of a fictional character or pet. The name Griswold would finally shake off all ambiguity and represent solely the classic lead character of National Lampoon's "Vacation" films.
But there's one aspect of zygotic personhood that has barely been scratched by proponents and opponents of Mississippi's brave new, extremely populated world.
What of eggs that have been fertilized but fail to attach to the uterine wall, even if not impaired by contraceptive drugs or devices? How should we treat such "persons?"
Since we must honor all aspects of the constitution, the establishment clause of the First Amendment prevents us from treating their unattached passage through the uterus as an "act of God." Therefore we must, logically, consider it the willful act of a fully legal person. In short, a suicide.
Now, while no state specifically outlaws suicide these days, it is still considered a common law crime, as defined in Blackstone.
The implications are clear. These little people, these angels-that-might-have-been, are, in fact, nothing more than common thugs. It is not too much to call them murderers. Under the more sensible statutes common just a few decades ago, they would have been considered nothing better.
Which opens up a fantastic business opportunity for forward-looking job creators in the Magnolia State.
One of the biggest growth industries of the last twenty years has been private prisons. And, with the passage of Initiative 26, and a clarification of Mississippi's laws based on Blackstone's commentaries, we will have created a whole new class of criminals--suicidal zygotes--a group of microscopic miscreants who will have to do the time for doing the crime.
As we all know, there's nothing government's good at. Private industry is always more efficient than tax-gobbling, regulation-shitting government (especially that of the Gret Stet of Mississippi, but don't get me started). Now consider the difficulties involved in finding and incarcerating little murderous Mississippians no bigger than a dozen cells. Certainly not the job you'd want to trust to the likes of Haley Barbour and the knuckleheads in Jackson, I can tell you!
So, Rebel Entrepreneurs, a new horizon beckons (though you might have to squint to see it): private prisons for really, really small prisoners, ne'er-do-wells who scoff at the laws of God and man and willfully, heartlessly take the lives of sacred persons.
Never mind the argument that these multi-cell murderers take no lives other than their own. If there is one thing Initiative 26 can teach us, it is that a Person's body is, by definition, not her own.