PersonhoodUSA’s Radical, Fetal-Separatist Agenda
One of the scariest social conservative concepts to come to fruition in the last 40 years is the so-called “Personhood” bill, which is actually on the ballot in Colorado, thanks to the Republican/Tea Party. The latest poll data suggests the bill will probably not pass, but it has a disturbing amount of support nonetheless.
Lynn Paltrow has a good piece on this issue, and its dangerous implications for women’s rights — because they’ll be back again even if they’re defeated in Colorado: PersonhoodUSA’s Radical, Fetal-Separatist Agenda.
Fetal separatists analogize fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses to African-American slaves who were once� “denied their humanity” and “stripped [of] their personhood.” They suggest that their goal is simply continuing an American tradition of expanding membership in the population of Constitutional persons. But, in fact, fetal separatism, in the guise of adding one group to the Constitutional population will do something unprecedented in US history: subtract another.
When former slaves were added to the constitutional population, this did not in any way diminish the constitutional rights or personhood of any other people in the United States. Although slaveholders lost significant power and privilege to enslave, and exploit others, they did not lose anything in terms of their status as constitutional persons under the law.
Similarly, when women of all races were added to the population of Constitutional persons through the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote, and Supreme Court cases prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex neither the constitutional rights nor the personhood of men was diminished. While men lost significant power over their wives and daughters as well as advantages in the worlds of work, education and civic life, they did not lose their status as full constitutional persons under the law.
In contrast and as the examples above demonstrate, efforts to legally disconnect fetuses and to grant them entirely independent constitutional status would not merely add a new group to the Constitutional population: it would effectively denaturalize pregnant women, removing from them their status as Constitutional persons.
Passing measures that legally segregate eggs, embryos and fetuses from the pregnant woman will also result in a new regime of separate and unequal. Pregnant women could be sued, subject to child welfare interventions, or even arrested if they engaged in activities at work and at home that might be thought to create a risk to the life of the “preborn.” Legally separating the “pre-born” from the pregnant women who sustain them will ensure that in jobs, education, and civic life, pregnant women will, once again, be unequal to men.
Flashback to last week: PersonhoodUSA is the group behind this freakish video, featuring Barack Obama as the Angel of Death.
