Friday, December 14, 2007

Abortion foes take new course: 'personhood'

Duncan Hunter has been introducing an act that would recongize personhood nationwide for years in Congress. On his Issues Page he says, "Likewise, I have also introduced the Right to Life Act, which would legally define “personhood” as the moment of conception and, therefore, guarantee all constitutional rights and protections, including life, to the unborn without utilizing a constitutional amendment."

Since this hasn't been able to get done federally, states are catching onto Duncan Hunter's approach.

Opening a new front in their assault on abortion, activists in half a dozen states are preparing ballot referendums that would grant "personhood" and constitutional rights to embryos from the moment of conception.

The drive is under way in Colorado, where activists have begun gathering signatures for an initiative, and Georgia, where the Legislature will take up the issue when it reconvenes in January. Abortion opponents in Montana, Oregon, Mississippi and Michigan are among those considering similar measures.

The new strategy takes an idea that has been central to the pro-life movement - that human life begins when an egg is fertilized - and makes it the centerpiece of state efforts to overturn women's legal right to an abortion. If the embryo is declared a person under a state's constitution, the reasoning goes, the termination of its existence must be considered murder.

(excerpt...see http://www.twincities.com/ci_7669270?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com&nclick_check=1)

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