Why Mississippi’s defeat of personhood is important

First of all: Whooooooo!!!!! We did it!!!! I don’t know if I’ve ever woken up singing and dancing, but I did On November 9.

Ok. So why is this a big deal? We know that personhood initiatives are in the works in other states, and less than twelve hours after our victory, we know that personhood supporters are going to try to work this through our legislature (which is now even more Republican and anti-woman [not that Republican and anti-woman are synonymous, but in today’s political climate, they are more than they aren’t]). So how much of a victory is this?

A HUGE ONE! After failing twice in Colorado, Personhood USA handpicked Mississippi as the conservative and uneducated state that might just pass this initiative without taking the time to learn about it, or just by having strong anti-abortion feelings. They thought that we would just let them walk all over us, and we proved them absolutely wrong. We will not be condescended to as the dumb scum of the US in overalls and no shoes. We have shoes, we have brains, and we used them to get the word out about how dangerous Initiative 26 really was. As this article in the Huffington Post said,

The forces who brought Personhood before the public insulted the intellectual and cultural sensibilities of thousands of Mississippians. They assumed Mississippi would be a cake walk. They provided grandma’s 1970’s abortion language that didn’t speak to many younger, yet conservative, Mississippians. They were sloppy in their organizing and flippant about their opposition; condescending. Their official Personhood website looks like my child’s 4th grade class designed it.

Don’t treat us like idiots, because we’re not. We care, and we fought against this amendment in one of the most conservative states in the nation. If we can do it, other states can. Yes, the fight is just beginning, but our victory is huge (even the White House has commented on it), and I’m gonna take a day to celebrate and dance around with a song in my head because I am proud to be a Mississippian today, and tomorrow I can begin to fight for these rights in the rest of the country (as well as continuing the fight here). I’ll end this post with my favorite quote from the article mentioned above:

There’s a lesson here about showing up in Mississippi without your game face on.