Yeah, I'm having a hard time seeing that right there as a person too. I'm dying to ask Huckabee and Co. if God has a special area in heaven for just-barely-fertilized eggs that were either miscarried or aborted. Does it seem like the fundies are just getting stupider and stupider?

If they can't find women to volunteer to carry all of these fertilized eggs to term, are they going to force us? After all, a full grown human female is just an incubator. Fucking assholes.

Fortunately, judging from the reaction similar but less insane variations on this theme have received, this is almost certain not to go anywhere.

Still, the cynical political side of me makes it want to succeed on a small scale somewhere, because the logical conclusion of this is so devastating not just to women but also to the medical and fetility industries that the backlash would push reproductive rights forward a good distance.

Oddly, I've always figured that the way to win an argument about forced pregnancy is to give them the possibility that the fetus might be a person. But the basic rights of a person are clearly not the goal of pro-lifers, who want to give fetuses more rights than an adult. No adult has the right to use my kidneys for dialysis without permission, or to use my blood in a transfusion without my permission, or to use my lungs to oxygenate their blood without my permission. No adult can violate my body to save his/her own life. So why should a fetus? Strangely, the only answer that I get when I say this is the assertion that "that's different!" I haven't quite figured out how yet...

This is so baffling to me. I mean, isn't it something like 80% of fertilized eggs don't implant (i.e. result in a pregnancy)? And something like 1/3 (or maybe 2/3?) that do implant miscarry within the first couple weeks, the woman not even knowing she was pregnant? So... what's up with that? Will women have to do constant pregnancy tests to see if they're pregnant, and then will emergency measures need to be taken when those "people's" lives are at risk because the egg fails to implant? Can you even detect a fertilized egg that hasn't implanted? Won't millions of "people" be dying without us knowing they even existed? How is that to prevented?

We can't even manage to provide medical care to the people who have been BORN in this country, where are the resources for these egg people going to come from? Because at the rate these "people" die, there will have to be massive emergency resources provided to keeping them "alive" by forcing women to do everything they can to maintain a "pregnancy" that their body rejected.

Sorry, I'm rambling, I'll paraphrase this law: Women=baby receptacle.

I'm reading Voltaire's Candide at the moment, a circus of absurdity played out in the most light-hearted fashion.
I almost thought I was reading a passed from the book.

I'm not surprised at this of course. White men without medical degrees seem to be in the habit of running around defining where life begins. I almost hope it passes so I can watch them running around trying to catch all of the poor discarded 8-celled embryos before they are shedded into the toilet.

An embryo is like a blueprint for a human being. I wonder if these men take to sheltering themselves under pieces of paper with doodles of houses whenever it rains. I certainly hope so.

I don't know. If I kind of squint I think I see it, a little person. No, actually, sorry; it looks like a snowman. Right there in the middle. Nope. not a person.

This is ridiculous. I never want to bear children. I just don't. I can't imagine being forcibly and legally bound to carry a pregnancy to term because someone else's religious beliefs tell them what is in my body is another human, whose rights outweigh mine. It's frightening and it's frustrating.

ugh.

It goes like this:

Man> embryo/fetus>Woman=Child>Nature

And even though this amendment probably won't pass, rest assured there are plenty of people who feel this way.

They walk among us. They are policymakers and other people with the power to make decisions that affect each and every one of us.

I am so disgusted. As far as I am concerned, the notion of women's equality is purely theoretical.
(I'm not talking about practical stuff like voting, etc-- I am simply talking about the idea of equality)

And the scary thing is that you cannot reason with people who do not see you as an equal.

Random addendum on the intersection of personhood-at-conception and undocumented alien laws (most notably that citizenship is constitutionally granted at *birth*), shamelessly stolen from a commenter over at discourse.net:

The world of possibilities opened up by Brett's observation that personhood within the US doesn't automatically grant citizenship is, IMHO, even more interesting. Where do you deport the new illegal alien to? Current case law doesn't require the government to prove that someone entered the country, just that they're here without being a citizen and without proper documentation. Does the mother have to go with? Is dad guilty as well due to his contribution to the illegal presence? If the illegal is incarcerated pending a deportation hearing, what happens regarding the mother and habeus corpus? Can the illegal remain in the US until birth grants citizenship because they are undergoing life-sustaining treatment (i.e. gestation)? If a citizen gets pregnant during a jaunt outside the country and returns before giving birth, is she guilty of smuggling an illegal alien? Does she need to become pregnant in a foreign country for this to occur or is it sufficient to go beyond territorial waters? If a woman becomes pregnant inside the US, is she guilty of transporting and harboring an illegal? I'm not sure if the separate sentences for smuggling, harboring, transporting, etc. an illegal can run concurrently or if twins, triplets, etc. would multiply the penalties, but wouldn't it be interesting if mom was still in jail long enough for Junior to become President (as a natural-born American) and pardon her for the crime of smuggling him into the country?

To avoid ending up in tears, my defensive laughter mechanism has left me howling.

Lately, I have been wondering why conservatives do not think our birth day should be the day we are a fertilized egg. I know it is called "birth" day, but if we are now humans at fertilization, should that not be when we celebrate ourselves?

Also what if a mother dies while giving birth, should we charge the baby with murder. Or if this fertilized egg prevents another fertilized egg from developing, should it be punished by law?

Good to see how many holes are in their argument for this amendment.

Biologically, a fertilized egg *is* a new human life.

Second, it seems Huckabee is very worried about protecting women. After all, worldwide, women are aborted far more often then men.

Why so eager to see female human life exterminated?

This argument is just so absurd and we've rehashed all the reasons why before (my favorite being: should I check my tampons for tiny people? Can I sue my fetus for rent, or for pain and suffering? Hahahaha). So to Huckabee and anyone who supports this amendment, all I can say is FUCK YOU.

And Papist - A fertilized egg has the POTENTIAL to grow into a human being. It is NOT a human being whose interests are equal to yours or mine. And thanks, I don't need men like Huckabee to protect me - I can make my decisions and deal with the consequences just fine on my own, thanks.

"Because at the rate these "people" die, there will have to be massive emergency resources provided to keeping them "alive" by forcing women to do everything they can to maintain a "pregnancy" that their body rejected."

I can see it now....doctors taking away time from helping 'real' causes to give CPR to fertilized eggs.

Wow!

Every time I drive to college I have to keep myself from ramming my car into the cars ahead of me with 'respect life' license plates!

Idiots!

Gopher - in Florida we have "Choose Life" license plates. I just want to ram the cars repeatedly. What the idiots don't realize is the operative word is CHOOSE. It's like they don't even understand the meaning of the word, since choice is the very thing they want to eliminate.

What is natural death anyway? If you don't die naturally, do your rights go away? Like, if you get hit by a bus and die, is it like you never existed? Nobody investigates it?

I don't think Mike Huckabee knows what's natural and what isn't, being that he doesn't believe in evolution and thinks the gay will poison us all.

At least if this law passes, you can sue your embryo for trespassing or squatting or anything else. And if the woman dies from continuing pregnancy or giving birth, does the fetus get charged with murder?

These kinds of arguments dont even make sense. If I'm an embry and have full rights as a person then I as an embryo support choice. I should never be forced onto my mother, and would never want to be.

They want to use the very real nonhuman status of an embryo to be a voiceless mouthpiece for their cause. Its like speaking for a deaf person so the person used is a chronic source of mind-less vessel to lend support for your personal views.

"Gopher - in Florida we have "Choose Life" license plates."

Ugh! I live in "a fetus is a real human with constitutional rights and full-grown human status" Colorado!The anti-choicers ARE nuts!

let's say some random person trespasses in your house. maybe you locked the door, maybe you forgot to, but anyway, they just barged in. this stranger starts eating the food off your plate, hogging the bathroom, kicking you out of bed. does that person have a right to stay and 'pursue happiness', just because they succeeded in entering your home? no? well then WHY would it be any different in your BODY?

Would this also affect the use of the morning after pill, since it could prevent a fertilized egg from implanting?

"Would this also affect the use of the morning after pill"

I believe so. I remember reading an article in "The Rocky Mountain News," some time ago explaining that it could even ban certain forms of contraceptive.

Abbie--I would guess that that's the idea, using this kind of legislation to then justify outlawing intentional interference with fertilized eggs.

I'm still having trouble with the whole notion that human life starts at a single point in time. It seems perfectly clear that being fully human includes a whole range of attributes that develop gradually over a long period of time--some physical things like breathing apparatus or yes, fingernails; behavioral things like the ability to learn, to conduct social interactions, to use language; by some measure even certain personality traits like humor or empathy (think about how someone who displays little emotion can be described as robotic or inhuman). To be honest it seems completely absurd to me to even attempt to choose a single developmental moment to distinguish "persons" from everything else. And the absurdity in this case is even more pointed, since the point chosen is so very early that the only apparent attribute of humanity they seem to think is relevant is the possession of human DNA. Does that mean the eggs I lose during menstruation are half-people? When I scratch off dry skin cells, are those people too? o.O

I kind of feel that at the end of the day, there is no way to come up with a universally agreed-upon line between human and not-yet-human. Which is why choice makes sense... If you personally feel that fingernails are the definition of humanity, then by all means feel free to choose to keep your fingernailed fetus. But realize that there any such judgment is going to be subjective, based on your own beliefs and biases, and can't be imposed wholesale on the entire population.

Incidentally, since a fertilized egg is developmentally speaking far inferior to, say, an adult cow, could we use their little argument to enforce vegetarianism on a meat-loving populace? I think there are some interesting possibilities there. . .

AbbieNormal--

That's exactly what it's about. The arguments about tiny Americans lost on tampons are funny, but the bill is a way to stop abortion, ban the morning-after pill, and even most forms of contraception, such as the Pill, the Ring, and even IUDs. But they don't tell you that part, because they know that the vast majority of voters are in favor of birth control.

MyBabyPanda, I'm sorry, but a fertilized egg cell is epigenitically a unique human being that, if given nutrition and shelter (like any of us, but to a greater degree), will develop into a full human being.

Something that isn't a human being already can't eventually "turn into one." It is one to begin with, right after fertilization and the fusing of the gametes.

Don't get mad at me, get mad at the medical community. Everyone agrees on it. You just think it's okay to destroy a human being at a certain stage, I don't think you can kill a human being at any stage. That's the difference.

@Cassie

You make an excellent point.

@Human bean

I think about that all the time! I also wonder why we should stop at protecting fertilized eggs. Why not protect bacteria and virus life as well? This pnemonia (sp?) that's festering in my lungs right now is just as alive as a fertilized egg.

I really do wonder why more of these people still take their medicine when they're sick. If God creates life, then on the opposite end of the spectrum, "he" also ends life. Why should human beings have so much dominion over their own bodies? Dammit, that's God's job! /sarcasm.

Cool!

So, let's see.

1) Woman robs bank
2) Woman has sex.
3) Women gets arrested.
4) Women informs officer that her "fetus" (/sarcasm) didn't get read Miranda rights.

hmm.

Could pregnant women go to jail?
Could them smoke without being brought up for child endangerment?
Could they drive cars? (flying is safer, you know...)

it's... just...-headdesk- these people are fucking insane.

I gotta say, I'm always so flippin' mad to see these attempts stupid fertilized egg amendments. They don't see a need for an ERA for women, but eggs, hell yeah! The smaller the better! What about the poor female eggs? Where do they stand in the eyes of Mr. Huckabee?

Attention young proto-feminists who just read what Papist said: The medical community believes no such thing. The vast majority of the medical community thinks Papist is out of their fucking mind.

Papist: Out of curiosity, do you support birth control and condom use, as these would lead to far fewer "murders?"

I've seen this argument before, and it just baffles me. The pro-birthers are so blinded by this imagined "right to life" that they believe
there's nothing more to life than not being dead.

To pile onto the absurdity: when I was pregnant, I had horrible "morning" sickness and had to miss work a few times. Could I sue my embryo for pain and suffering, and lost wages?

So, Papist, I'd like you to answer a question that someone here posed before:

If a fertility clinic were on fire and you could either save an 8 year old trapped in a closet, or a frozen vile with 5 fertilized eggs, which would you choose? I mean, since those fertilized eggs are "unique human beings", you'd probably ignore the screaming 8 year old and go for the vial, right?

And you're wrong. Medical professionals do NOT unanimously believe a fertilized egg to be a human being. It's the Catholic church and Evangelicals who believe that, not that science matters a whole lot to many of them anyhow.

"Something that isn't a human being already can't eventually "turn into one." It is one to begin with, right after fertilization and the fusing of the gametes."

So can seeds not turn into trees?

I mean, how do you logically even put these two sentences together? Something that isn't already a human being can't turn into one but fertilization and fusion of gametes turns those non-human-being gametes into a human being? Do you even realize how absurd and just dumb that sounds?

I think a bill like that just got tabled in Georgia last week. I might have a little more sympathy if the people supporting these pieces of legislation had any intention of caring for the baby or their family AFTER birth. Or if any of them ever bothered to address the fact that blocking access to birth control raises abortion rates, or that making abortion illegal doesn't lower abortion rates and heightens abortion related deaths or if they would condemn bombing clinics where lots of unique human beings work, or you know... anything logical like that. But then again, recognizing those needs tends to make one pro-choice.

Using wing-nut logic: anyone who fries an egg should be charged with cruelty to animals.

Human Bean:

It's really hard to say when personhood actually does exist (nobody has come up with a way to reliably indicate self-awareness), but it's fairly easy to say when it could not yet exist. The definition of death of a person is generally 'brain death', implying that if there is no brain activity, there is no person. This generally isn't too controversial, except in the cases of what advanced life support can do for brainless bodies (i.e. the Schiavo case).

Synaptic connections only start forming after 25 weeks of gestation, before which time it is biologically impossible for the fetus to actually have any brain function.

This marks the far early point. It's not sufficient just to have synapses to have a a functioning brain, but we know it cannot happen before then. 25 weeks is coincidentally a convenient marker point because it's the point at which there is barely enough lung development that (with sufficiently advanced technology available) a fetus can be sustained outside of a womb.

That's the earliest rational compromise point. Frankly, it's pretty unlikely that there's enough neurological development even at 25 weeks to support any kind of cognition, but anyone claiming personhood before that point has pretty much no medical/biological support for the argument at all.

Oh, and speaking of a lack of medical/biological support for an argument, let me respond to one point by AmericanPapist:

I'm sorry, but a fertilized egg cell is epigenitically a unique human being [...]

For these and other reasons, medical professionals will tell you that a pregnancy begins with implantation (not fertilization), and make no statement about personhood at all.

Trying to define personhood as beginning at conception is roughly as accurate and as useful as trying to define pi as exactly equal to three, and seems to be attempted for much the same reason.

zed you just kicked so much ass.

"I'm sorry, but a fertilized egg cell is epigenitically a unique human being that, if given nutrition and shelter (like any of us, but to a greater degree), will develop into a full human being."

Did this person reduce an adult human female to "food and shelter"?

Um, most human beings (like any of us, as you said) generally aren't GIVEN shit for food and shelter. Human beings have to work to pay rent and buy food, including very young children in many parts of the world.

Or perhaps you've not heard of infant mortality (very high in the US for an industrialized nation, by the way) Infanticide? Starvation? Child labor?

So what is this magical food and shelter fairy that you speak of?

I guess a dozen or so quotes won't change things, because everyone seems to embedded in non-reality:

http://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html

Do note these are citations from medical dictionaries, primarily.

As for the "seed" vs. "tree" some have used. Exactly, What kind of seed grows into a tree? A "tree seed."

In this case, "tree" and "seed" are two names to describe the SAME entity, just at different points in time.

Kind of like "zygote" and "baby."

Thanks for making my point.

Another thing I've noticed is that folks find it prettymuch impossible to stay on topic. Every other "reply" is something wildly unrelated to what we're actually discussing it. It's impossible to respond to so many unrelated points, so I'm not going to try to even attempt that. The fact is, Huckabee is concerned about human life here, and preserving it. Women who want unlimited abortion on demand do a disservice to their gender, because guess what, it's mostly women who get aborted. I'm sorry no one else thinks that a problem.

Papist, you're just wrong. More than half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, most before women even know it. Google "chemical pregnancy." So many zygotes have horrible genetic issues that there's no way they'd become a human. Framing the argument that way is just blatantly and demonstrably incorrect it's absurd.

Wow, the whole post reminded me of George Carlin's "Pro-Life is anti-woman" speech. You can see it on YouTube under the same title. It's amazing.

“As for the "seed" vs. "tree" some have used. Exactly, What kind of seed grows into a tree? A "tree seed."�

Aren’t you just smart and cute? Yes ,it is a human egg, human zygote, human embryo, human fetus, which is NOT EQUAL to a human being, NOT EQUAL to a person. Just like human hair, human limbs, human organs are not equal to a human being, i.e. a person.

Oh, and as for those quotes. I looked at the first couple of them. Let’s look at the first one for example “Development of the embryo begins at Stage 1 when a