"Personhood" and its Flaws

Recently, I was skimming the headlines of The New York Times, and I came across this article: The ‘Personhood’ Initiative. I hadn't ever heard the term "personhood" before so I read the first paragraph. It completely blew me away.

"A ballot measure going before voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8 would define the term “person” in the State Constitution to include fertilized human eggs and grant to fertilized eggs the legal rights and protections that apply to people."

I know that many people, including myself, have strong feelings, for or against abortion. I want to make something clear, in this post, I am not trying to argue about abortion.  


This is a much more specific argument. It's the argument of what qualifies as a person and how that definition could hurt women everywhere.


This definition of a person was staggering to me. Did people really think that a fertilized human egg was a person? It's .22 mm wide! And how could this fertilized human egg have the same rights and protections as a person? 

In another New York Times article, Dr. Randall S. Hines, a fertility specialist in Jackson, Mississippi working against this vote, said, “Once you recognize that the majority of fertilized eggs don’t become people, then you recognize how absurd this amendment is.”

Even more, the article writes, “The aim is to redefine abortion and some of the most widely used forms of contraception as murder, obliterating a woman’s right to make childbearing decisions under the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.”

If a women gets raped and then pregnant, then she wouldn't be able to get an abortion. The same applies for incest. Types of birth control would be illegal, but more importantly, women's rights would be limited. But wait, isn't it 2011? 

• If you have further interests on this topic here is the website for the "Personhood" amendment.