I was shocked and disturbed to read an article today (I believe the actual article was published yesterday) on Mother Jones by Tim Murphy:
In November, Mississippians will vote on an amendment to change the meaning of the word "person" in the state constitution. Under the new language, human life would begin not at birth but at the moment of fertilization. If the amendment passes, it will outlaw abortion in the state entirely, even in cases of rape or incest. It might even leave some forms of contraception, and procedures such as in vitro fertilization, on life support. (http://motherjones.com/...)
This is what the bill boils down to.
If your father, uncle, brother or any other male relative rapes you and you end up getting pregnant as a diabolical result you should give birth to that child and that child must suffer from genetic disorders, mutations and abnormalities until merely living becomes torture.
If you are raped by a monster who has AIDS you should be denied an abortion and instead bring up a child who too will be infested with AIDS. Thus that child should be conceived only to suffer tremendously and then eventually die never having the chance to live a quality life.
The problem with the language of this bill is that it relegates the inception of human life at the moment of fertilization instead of the moment of consciousness. The bill thus makes a categorical mistake and confuses potentiality with actuality. I have argued in a previous diary that an apple seed is not an apple tree. Similarly a fetus or an embryo cannot be a human being. The apple seed only has the potential to be an apple tree and the fetus or the embryo has the potential to be a human being.
And how do we know that fetus or the embryo has simply the potential to be a human being? Simply because many times it never gets to be a fully shaped human being and dies such as in a miscarriage.
The man behind the amendment is none other than Les Riley. According to Mother Jones:
Riley once supported an effort to form an independent theocratic republic in South Carolina, and he belonged to an organization—the League of the South—dedicated to forming a "free Southern Republic" built on biblical law.
Not a surprise here. Laws built on either the Bible or the Sharia tend to be vehemently patriarchal and favor male dominance and female subjugation over female choice and self-determinism.
But I am curious and wonder what Riley dream theocratic republic based on the Bible would look like. Would it kill homosexuals, compel a rapist to marry his victim, stone adulterers, and ensure slavery? I imagine it would be a western counterpart to Saudi Arabia or Iran.
What amazes me is that zealous women i.e., the accomplices of people like Les Riley seek to sacrifice their own independence for the sake of securing this overtly dominant patriarchy and thereby jeopardize the future of womanhood.
