Personhood By Stealth.

From RHRealityCheck:

Tomorrow, December 10, 2009 the Kentucky Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a case involving the prosecution of a pregnant, drug-using woman. It is an important opportunity to understand the broader issues at stake in cases that seem narrowly focused on the very small percentage of pregnant women who use illegal drugs. Oral argument is scheduled for 10 AM and you will be able to watch a live stream of the arguments by clicking this link.

In this case, the state arrested a new mother who, according to the Commonwealth of Kentucky, “ingested cocaine” while her daughter “was in utero and thereafter gave birth.” The daughter was healthy but, according to the Commonwealth, both the mother and newborn tested positive for cocaine. The new mother wasn’t charged with a drug crime – rather she was charged with the crime of “wanton endangerment.” Kentucky alleges that she engaged “in conduct which created a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury to” another person – her “unborn” child.

Notice that this law is directed to “conduct” that “creates a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury.” Many people in positions of power think that a pregnant woman who refuses cesarean surgery, have births outside of hospital settings, or insists on a vaginal birth after previous cesarean surgery is creating a “substantial danger of death or serious physical injury” to an unborn child.

The Commonwealth wants the Kentucky Supreme Court to interpret this law, and, in fact, every criminal law in the state, to include pregnant women in relationship to the fetuses they carry. Indeed, a close reading of the lower court’s opinion and the Commonwealth’s arguments makes clear that they hope, through this court case, to pass what would, in effect, be a “personhood measure.” As a result, even abortions necessary to protect a woman’s life or health could be charged as homicide.

Because of the broad implications of this case and the medical misinformation it relies on, sixty public health and advocacy organizations as well as numerous experts signed on to amicus (friend of the court) briefs explaining why the court should reject the Commonwealth’s invitation to radically re-write state law. Not a single organization filed an amicus brief supporting this kind of dangerous judicial activism. Kentucky treatment and recovery advocates Michael Barry and Pam Scott published an op-ed in the Courier-Journal explaining why Arresting pregnant women is bad for babies.

Read the rest of the article here.

PersonhoodUSA Working to Redefine Zygotes as Persons.

The organization was founded a year ago after Amendment 48, slated to define fertilized eggs as persons, failed to pass in Colorado. They are an umbrella organization that works to coordinate efforts to amend state constitutions to define a fertilized egg, or zygote, as a person, and thus protected by all civil rights given a person.

PersonhoodUSA has 37 state-level affiliates, and 7 are hoping to land amendments on ballots in 2010 and some have estimated that they have raised more than $60 million in the past five years.

Prior anti-abortion efforts have been to limit access. PersonhoodUSA is aimed at redefining when life begins. In other words restrictions are not enough. Abolishing abortion, state by state is their purpose. They describe themselves as:

a grassroots Christian organization founded to establish personhood efforts across America to create protection for every child by love and by law. Personhood USA is committed to assisting and supporting Personhood Legislation and Constitutional Amendments and building local pro-life organizations through raising awareness of the personhood of the pre-born. When the term “Person” is granted to a human being, it refers to the presence of a particular set of characteristics that grant that individual certain rights such as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As Sarah Kliff writes in the November 2 issue of Newsweek:

The personhood strategy grew out of a line in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court decision legalizing abortion, in which Justice Harry Blackmun responded to the argument of the state of Texas that a fetus is a person under the Fourteenth Amendment. "If this suggestion of personhood is established," Blackmun wrote, "[Jane Roe's] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the amendment." So if personhood begins at conception, the thinking goes, Roe falls apart.

While establishing personhood (under the auspices of Human-Life Amendments) was pursued at the state level and nationally in the mid- to late- 70's the efforts failed squarely. The tactic languished until the early 2000s when a new generation of anti-abortion activists thought to pick up the strategy again.

In California, PersonhoodUSA is calling their initiative, "California Human Rights Amendment." In Nevada, the initiative will define life as beginning with fertilization and ending with natural death, in an effort to halt abortion and the burgeoning Death with Dignity movement.

Read more here, here, and here.