Turning an egg into a "person"

[dcsmart]

Nicole Colson, Chicago

THE RACE is on to see which group of state legislators can turn back the clock on women's rights first.

Last week, the North Dakota House of Representatives approved, by a 51-to-41 vote, a law giving a woman's fertilized eggs the rights of a human being.

Yes, you read that correctly. If the measure is approved by the North Dakota Senate and signed into law, "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens"--in other words, any fertilized human egg--will be legally considered a "person," protected by rights granted by the North Dakota Constitution and state laws.

Not to be outdone, on February 26, Montana's state Senate passed its own constitutional "personhood" amendment for fertilized eggs in a 26-24 vote. Legislators in Maryland, South Carolina and Alabama also are considering such measures, and anti-choice forces in Oregon and Mississippi are expected to launch drives to put "personhood" measures on the ballots in those states in the near future. A similar ballot measure was defeated in Colorado in November.

Just for a moment, consider what these bills would mean. The second an egg is fertilized--whether in a woman's body or in a petrie dish--it would be entitled to the same legal rights as actual living human beings.

Not surprisingly, these proposed laws are designed as an attack on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision granting women in the U.S. the right to abortion. Some anti-abortion activists believe that Roe contains a "loophole" because the decision, written by then-Justice Harry Blackmun, stated that if the "personhood" of a fetus could be established, then "the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the (14th) Amendment."

The idea, then, of the extreme anti-choice movement, is that if enough states legislate fetuses into "personhood," then Roe would have to be overturned--despite the fact that in his ruling, Blackmun stated definitively that the legal concept of "personhood" should not "include the unborn."
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FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/27/an-egg-into-a-person

[MADem]

1. So, my fried egg for breakfast is now a chicken dinner? Who knew? nt

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. LOL - oh yeah - you gave me an out loud gut laugh on that one

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eating a chicken person for breakfast!

actually

most commercial eggs are unfertilized

but still

ya made a good yolk out of the topic!!

[pipi_k]

5. No yolk!!!!

When I was a child, and even now, I cannot eat eggs unless the yolk is completely incorporated into the entire egg...i.e. scrambled.

Actually, eating the white only is even better, but still...


The problem was (still is) that egg yolks seemed too much like "liquid chickens".

I know it's just the food the embryo "eats".

But they STILL look like liquid chicken to me.

:puke:

[ejpoeta]

3. then i propose that we reclassify chicken eggs as living beings

protected by law. and we should protect fish eggs too. who wants to start the protests!!!

[bemildred]

4. Eggs have at least as good a claim as corporations. nt

[LeftishBrit]

6. Most fertilized eggs don't survive to become babies anyway.

Even if one believes that life begins at conception, from a medical point of view 'conception' is usually defined to include implantation, not just fertilization. Ot the spontaneous miscarriage rate would be something like 70%.

This is getting to remind me of the song, 'Every sperm is sacred'.