Does my fertilized egg need a passport to travel out of the country? And how the hell will the customs official check the photo ID against the "person?"

I heard this on the radio but worth repeating: there’s a fire at a fertility clinic and you have time either to save an 8 year-old who’s trapped in a closet, or go to the freezer and rescue a test tube with 5 frozen embryos.

If fertilized eggs are people, don’t you have to save the test tube with 5 people in it, and sadly let the one kid burn to death?

Stumps anti-choicers every time.

Wait, I could score big with this one. Does this mean that my husband and I will get TAX DEDUCTIONS for all the fertilized eggs we created whilst doing IVF?

If so, IVF just started paying for itself, which I somehow doubt was the intent of those anti-choice idiots.

Doesn't that mean EVERY SINGLE EGG that gets fertilized in IVF has to be carried to term? Even if doing so means that the mom may die because no human female was meant to carry seven or eight infants at once?

ccall, I like that one. I may have to use it in the future.

If a fertilized egg is a person, does that mean that a pregnant woman can sue it for pain and suffering? Trespassing? Theft of services?

So...a single cell is a person, but an orangutan with symbolic language capabilities, thoughts, and feelings, is just a dumb animal with no legal protections. Not that I'm a PETA person, but I just don't understand this idea that all human life is always special and sacred and better than any other kind of life.

JPlum: Awesome, I love that! I would totally sue my future embryo for morning sickness, and any lost wages! :)

These people have their heads up their butts far too far.

If a fertilized egg is granted personhood, what about HOMINIDS? Oh, it's OK to torture a gorilla, but it's NOT OK to kill a fertilized egg???

I really hope they all die a long, painful death, if possible, all of them together any day now.

I wonder how carefully they worded the law?

If they didn't think to cover the embryo at each stage of cell division, the "person" would be gone before anyone even knew it was there.

Another consideration: since about half of all fertilized eggs get expelled spontaneously, this is a great opportunity for the pharma companies -- a fertilized egg retention pill, mandatory after every intercourse.

So does anybody conceived in the State of Colorado immediately become a US citizen?

I hope they're willing to handle the influx of immigrants this will encourage.

This is why we must have better science education. If people realized how many cells they slothed off every day, perhaps this would seem as ridiculous to them as it does to us. What's next... more every sperm is sacred, so save your... precious bodily fluids?

Oh, and Chickensh*tEagle - brilliant.

Doesn't this also open up women who miscarry to charges of negligent homicide? Especially if they smoked or drank before they realized they were pregnant (or even after)?

That's fucked up.

If a rooster bonks a hen, and then I collect the eggs and eat them, am I an animal abuser?

please. those idiots.

My boyfriend suggested prosecuting the Catholic Church for soliciting criminally negligent homicide on a massive scale, since the rhythm method destroys more fertilized eggs than any other method of contraception.

See http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/520790/

I was raised Catholic, and I thought it was a good idea (loved my priests and their openminded, common-sense approach to ethics, the world, and other religions, not terribly fond of the dogma re: sexuality.)

Mary Tracy9: If a fertilized egg is granted personhood, what about HOMINIDS?

Typical leftwing radical feminazi response. You can't win with reason, so you resort to ad hominoid attacks! ;-)

I agree with all the comments. While anti-choicers are trying to call a fertilized egg a person, they really have no idea the positive and negative implications of being a person, like getting sued or getting evicted. They're so blinded by the imagined "right to life" that they believe there's nothing more to life than not being dead.

And talk about irony -- to me, it seems like only yesterday that people were demonstrating on the birth of Louise Brown, the first IVF baby, with signs that said THIS BABY HAS NO SOUL!

So, will all twins (or perhaps their mother) in Colorado be immediately charged with violating the human cloning ban?

The government records archivist in me is also asking 'Do you people have any idea how this will affect the collection of vital statistics?'

You're going to end up with a death rate that far outnumbers your birth rate. Hell, you're going to end up with a death rate that outnumbers your population!

The recordkeeping nightmares that this would create haunt me!

Does this mean I have to carefully inspect my panties before I wash them? Can I flush tampons?

What if there's a "person" there?

Fucking insantity.

How can a person be alive if they aren't breathing?

Wow. Well, hopefully Colorado’s registered voters will read between the lines and check the proponent’s anti-choice rhetoric before endorsing the ballot initiative.

Darsana Srinivasan here at the National Women’s Law Center has more on this at our blog.

I especially like the line in the article, "If it's a human being, it's a person, and hey, they deserve equal rights under our law."

Hmm fertilized egg, single cell = Human being? Sounds like someone could use a serious Biology 101 course.

What other states have proposals like this one?

I bet Arkansas is one of them.

I've never tried the human child vs. multiple embryos in a fire question on anti-choicers. Does it actually get them thinking? Or do they just blow it off as another "babykiller's" distraction from the real issue.

Whenever issues like this come up, I always think back to when Jon Stewart called Sam Brownback a vagina. It was quite sexist, but it still made me giggle because Jon came to the only logical conclusion based on Brownback's arguement.

Brownback was saying that an eagle egg and an eagle are one in the same because the eagle comes out of the egg.

The absurdities are so obvious, I wonder if there might not be an unstated purpose here -- considering the workaday problems it would created for IVF clinics, perhaps it's really intended to put the kibosh on IVF, which these folks aren't keen on anyway.

Beyond that, no IFV, no stem cell research.

Bittergradstudent, I think this means that all identical twins will have to be considered only one person, because the split doesn't take place immediately-- I think it can take place anytime up to 14 days after fertlization.

If any of these laws pass, I've got two options A) move out of this country or B) get myself sterilized. omg I fucking hate people.

I think that twins would still be prosecuted for cloning, but the problem would be figuring out which was the original, and which was the clone.

michigan tried to pass something like this but it failed to get enough signatures to make any ballot. here's hoping this one fails too!

feministe did a post on this yesterday, i think, where they mentioned that 70% of fertilized eggs are expelled during menstruation...what then?

Worse. Think about ectopic pregnancy. The woman would bleed to death while the "person" lodged in her fallopian tubes was given due process.

And the other states are (via Trailer Park Feminist) Montana, Georgia, Mississippi, Michigan and Oregon.

What really scares me is if this passes, emergency contraception could be illegal because it can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting, same as regular bcps and IUD's!

Wow. Soon, they'll be clapping all women in irons for menstruating. I can't believe that this has gotten so far. I thought Colorado was pretty liberal. Any chance this thing might actually pass? Then again, I also thought California was liberal, and we passed an anti gay marriage initiative a while ago.

Shades of Romania from decades ago, and now, El Salvador.

"I thought Colorado was pretty liberal."

Nope. Three words: Colorado Springs, CO. Home to the highest concentration of Christian Dominionists (ahem, Evangelicals) in the country. Boulder is extremely liberal though :)

I wonder if this means I could sue a fertilized egg in my body for theft (my bodies nutrients would be all sucked up).

hmmm...maybe not all bad...i have a friend who is 11 days overdue and i am sure she would like to serve an eviction notice...

I really think the term "anti-choicers" is unnecessary. Insulting people whose opinions differ from (or oppose) yours will not get them to listen.

Anti-choice is perfectly descriptive of their position, roboJulie. It's more fitting than pro-life, which I would reserve for people who actually demonstrate genuine concern for real people.

Gah, do we really have to explain that again?

And they would probably call us anti-lifers, wouldn't they? Call people what they want to be called and eventually maybe we'll reach some sort of conclusion without all the nonsense mudslinging.

Call people what they want to be called? Okay, from here on out I want to be addressed as Supreme Goddess of the Universe.

They are not pro-life. They do not give a shit about the living, those who are undeniably alive with full rights. They are pro-forced pregnancy, pro-forced birth, anti-bodily integrity, anti-abortion, largely anti-contraception, and many other things. But they cannot lay claim to the term pro-life. And I will not call them pro-life because to do so would suggest that I agree with their definition of life and what it means to be pro-life.

I am pro-life, pro-choice, pro-contraception, pro-abortion, anti-forced pregnancy, pro-bodily integrity, and many other things. But I don't give a shit how they want to label me. Whether they call me by my preferred label in terms of reproductive freedom (pro-choice) or anti-life, it doesn't really matter. The fact is that we will never "reach some sort of conclusion" because we differ on the most basic levels which have nothing to do with any perceived "nonsense mudslinging."

I really think the term "anti-choicers" is unnecessary.

Heh. Too bad!

Insulting people whose opinions differ from (or oppose) yours will not get them to listen.

Wow, a concern troll on a post like this. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

or...you know...how they call us the "pro aborts" b/c to be pro choice means to be all abortions all the time...it has nothing to do w/ the choice to exercise control over your own body...

nope...anti-choice fits just like a nice expensive shoe...

I find the anti-choicers' use of the 'personhood' argument really annoying because in discussions of the right to bodily integrity (which I feel is the strongest argument *for* abortion rights), the 'personhood' of the embryo/fetus would be completely irrelevant anyway.

The "right to life" does not extend to the right to co-opt another person's body against their will in order to support that life. That applies to organ donation as well as gestating a fetus.

Maybe I'm being too naiive, but I keep thinking that if only we had an abortion law based upon bodily integrity instead of "right to privacy" or however Roe. vs. Wade worded it, it would be much more air-tight and less vulnerable to a lot of the rediculous legal challenges by the anti-choicers.

albinosquid, I agree with you on the constitutional argument. The "penumbral right to privacy" that "emanates" from the Bill of Rights, instead of being grounded in a specific amendment, is pretty shaky. Unfortunately, that's where the Supreme Court decided to put most of our sexual liberties. If Roe v. Wade gets struck down, our right to contraception is next on the chopping block.

I think what the country needs is a constitutional amendment granting the right to privacy, or something along those lines.

I really think the term "anti-choicers" is unnecessary. Insulting people whose opinions differ from (or oppose) yours will not get them to listen.

I'm not sure why that's an "insult," but that's OK, I always refer to them as "forced pregnancy advocates." See, that way they get to be advocates of something, and not against something. And that's what they want, right? Every woman that conceives must be forced to continue the pregnancy, no matter what the woman wants or her circumstances.

so if a fertilized egg (hmm... my dictionary does not list EGG and HUMAN as synonyms...) can i say that abortion is self-defense? the egg was threatening to destroy my (way of) life. So I killed it in self-defense right?

oh hold on- that argument will never work! because- duh! I'm a woman and therefore NOT a person.

I'm a woman and therefore NOT a person.

You were a person from the time you were a fertilized ovum right up until you were born. What are you, some kind of entitlement freak? :-)