Mississippi to mount latest legal challenge to Roe vs Wade

[Faqa]

(I don't know how this hasn't come up yet, but I haven't seen it in searches)

Mississippi is voting next month on an amendment to it's constitution which would extend 'personhood' to the moment of fertilization. The fact that they've collected the votes to let this even make it to a state constitutional amendment is frightening. Their proposal, in full:

Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi: SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.

Their full site is here. And in case anyone had any doubts about their motivations or angle - it's DEEPLY religiously oriented. I hate stereotypes that confirm themselves.

Shit-stirring aside, any thoughts on this?

For my own part, another legal battle on abortion that got any sort of traction would indicate a disturbing demographic shift in the U.S. Granted that they might have a point that whatever you might think about abortion, legislating it nation-wide via court case is not the way to go. Might, I say, to forestall flames.

[Col. Crackpot]

As an aside (and a bizarre one at that), I would like to point out that apparantly this legally grants personhood to clones? I thought standard fundie belief decries cloning as an abomination against god?

[Rabid]

The question is : how do they define human personhood ? If this clone has an altered DNA, they could always try to argue that he isn't really human, and as such isn't covered by this law. If they wanted to be giant hypocritical human supremacists douchebags, I mean.

[Simon_Jester]

What's really damned awkward about this one is that every miscarriage now comes with an associated requirement to do all the things you normally do to investigate when a person dies...

[DPDarkPrimus]

What's really damned awkward about this one is that every miscarriage now comes with an associated requirement to do all the things you normally do to investigate when a person dies...

Involuntary manslaughter, perhaps?

[Alyrium Denryle]

What's really damned awkward about this one is that every miscarriage now comes with an associated requirement to do all the things you normally do to investigate when a person dies...

Involuntary manslaughter, perhaps?

Pretty much, yeah. If you dont do EVERYTHING in your power to keep that embryo (which most miscarriages are), or fetus from dying(20% of all pregnancies), then yeah. You could be charged with negligent homicide. How wonderful!

[Rabid]

And as such barred from all carrier paths where having a clean (?police?) record is a requirement. Lovely.


This'll do wonder to help women attain parity on elected positions, I reckon.

[Eulogy]

How many policemen would actually bother to haul victims mothers in for "murder"? How many judges won't throw out cases of miscarriage? What jury would rule her guilty?

They didn't think this sham all the way through, did they?

[Rabid]

They didn't think this sham all the way through, did they?

It's an anti-abortion piece of legislation. That they didn't think of all of the consequences is kind of a given.

[insert typical knee-jerk "how dare they !" reaction]

Seriously, now : What's more to say about this that hasn't already been said time and time again on the same subject ?

[Samuel]

What is different is this time, if someone is curious, this gives them a chance to email the site and ask how they will deal with the legal issues people brought up here. We should make a list although I doubt they would respond.

[Eulogy]

What is different is this time, if someone is curious, this gives them a chance to email the site and ask how they will deal with the legal issues people brought up here. We should make a list although I doubt they would respond.

Well I can at least start the list:
-This places all pregnant women at risk of automatically becoming murderers, regardless of how they became pregnant or whether anyone even knows a miscarriage happened, mother included. This includes rape victims, who may very well want to abort yet another product of the evil act and a reminder of the monster who inflicted said evil act. This also includes women who miscarry without realizing it, as an embryo can look very much like the blood and refuse normal periods yield.
-This criminalizes all pregnant women who miscarry through no fault of their own, due to factors outside of their control and of which no reasonable person could predict would happen.
-This places yet more burden on an already subpar, extortionate healthcare system as expecting mothers now have to go to extreme measures to make sure they don't miscarry. Due to the predatory nature of the American "healthcare" system, this means even more money is spent out of pocket, and families become more poor.
-Poor mothers are overall more likely to miscarry, thus this measure needlessly punishes the poor.
-This creates more criminals, with all the problems and consequences thereof. Economy suffers as nobody wants to hire a murderer (even though the crime was outright false and unjust), prison populations swell (with accompanying expenses), and the legal system is bogged down with ridiculous cases of so-called "homicide".
-This law is inherently misogynist, although the father can be imprisoned as well for being an accessory to murder, if he does something to make the miscarriage or stillbirth more likely (such as giving wrong advice, for instance).
-Deformed babies are unfortunate, but this law doesn't stop at murder; if a baby needs surgery the mother could be charged with (for example) assault. Such a thing is clearly absurd.
-This leads to lots of acts of civil disobedience, with more unreported, as good people will not punish a mother for miscarrying and police, judges, attorneys, and jurors cannot in good conscience lock up a traumatized woman for an event that she has no control over and occurs not rarely. Those who do punish the mother risk retaliation from the family and friends of the mother, and from society if (or rather, when) word gets out.
-Evil people can try to get the mother to miscarry and thus get her charged with murder.
-This measure creates contempt for the law, as no sane person can ever respect such a measure and anyone who supports said measure.

[Patrick Degan]

No clause or amendment of any state constitution gets to trump the Federal constitution. Mississippi can just as well try to amend their constitution to legalise chattel slavery again and it would have about the same chance of standing a court challenge as this half-assed amendment will —absolute zero. This act is a dead-letter, no matter what its backers have deluded themselves into believing.

[Faqa]

That's the thing, though - what specifically does this amendment contradict in the federal constitution? I get the impression that they're mainly trying to take on precident-setting court cases using this amendment.

[Serafina]

No clause or amendment of any state constitution gets to trump the Federal constitution. Mississippi can just as well try to amend their constitution to legalise chattel slavery again and it would have about the same chance of standing a court challenge as this half-assed amendment will —absolute zero. This act is a dead-letter, no matter what its backers have deluded themselves into believing.

IF this constitutional amendment gets challenged in court, then yes, precedent rulings of the supreme court should overturn it.
The thing is that no one really wants to do that, because the current US supreme court might use that as an opportunity to overturn or weaken Roe vs Wade. So it's very well possible that it won't be challenged in court for a long time.

[Broomstick]

That's the thing, though - what specifically does this amendment contradict in the federal constitution? I get the impression that they're mainly trying to take on precident-setting court cases using this amendment.

It's the precedent-setting court case, not the Federal constitution that says nothing about abortion, that they're going after. They anti-abortion folks can't get a Federal amendment, so they'll try going state-by-state.

[Faqa]

But to do that, it needs to be permissible to oppress uppity women as the LAWD intended outlaw abortion at all - and according to Roe vs Wade, it is not.

(No, seriously. I can be sympathetic to some anti-choicers, but the religiously oriented ones always seem to have deeply ugly motives behind their opinion)

So essentially, it's like the Scopes trial - they WANT someone to challenge this in order to fight out abortion in court. I'm really wondering if this whole tangent of law is something that ought to be permitted or not. The original writers of the legal texts had no idea or thought of any of these concepts. Most of what you're doing is taking them out of context. That's a fun game for Jewish yeshiva students to do with the Talmud, but it doesn't seem to be the best way to run a country. Such things are properly the place of the legislative branch of government, I would think.

[Faqa]

But to do that, it needs to be permissible to oppress uppity women as the LAWD intended outlaw abortion at all - and according to Roe vs Wade, it is not.

(No, seriously. I can be sympathetic to some anti-choicers, but the religiously oriented ones always seem to have deeply ugly motives behind their opinion)

So essentially, it's like the Scopes trial - they WANT someone to challenge this in order to fight out abortion in court. I'm really wondering if this whole tangent of law is something that ought to be permitted or not. The original writers of the legal texts had no idea or thought of any of these concepts. Most of what you're doing is taking them out of context. That's a fun game for Jewish yeshiva students to do with the Talmud, but it doesn't seem to be the best way to run a country. Such things are properly the place of the legislative branch of government, I would think.

[Patrick Degan]

That's the thing, though - what specifically does this amendment contradict in the federal constitution? I get the impression that they're mainly trying to take on precedent-setting court cases using this amendment.

1. The proposed amendment would deny rights guaranteed under the United States constitution. 14th amendment violation as well as a Supremacy Clause violation.

2. The proposed amendment violates privacy rights arising from the 4th, 9th, and 14th amendments, which serve as the legal underpinnings for both Roe and Griswold.

3. The very vagueness and sweeping definitions the proposed amendment would employ to make even miscarriage potentially prosecutable as murder violate due process as defined under the 4th amendment.

[Alyeska]

No clause or amendment of any state constitution gets to trump the Federal constitution. Mississippi can just as well try to amend their constitution to legalise chattel slavery again and it would have about the same chance of standing a court challenge as this half-assed amendment will —absolute zero. This act is a dead-letter, no matter what its backers have deluded themselves into believing.

Only through a court challenge. First the law gets enforced and innocent people get sent to jail. The law does not go through Federal review before implementation.

[Eulogy]

First the law gets enforced and innocent people get sent to jail.

Sadly, while there will be victims because of this insanity, I can't help but wonder about the lawmakers finding out that the police in general refuse to enforce this measure (and judges laughing off cases of miscarriage) and they throw a hissy fit. Then the prisoners they wronged band together for a huge class-action lawsuit.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

As an aside (and a bizarre one at that), I would like to point out that apparantly this legally grants personhood to clones? I thought standard fundie belief decries cloning as an abomination against god?

It is. I believe that part of the law is aimed at killing embryonic stem cell research. Since, to get embryonic stem cells, you must first have (and kill) embryos. To have medical therapies involving embryonic stem cells, you must first clone the person being treated, so that you have embryos that you can then kill for their stem cells.

Ergo, in Mississippi, if you were doing embryonic stem cell research, you would then be committing murder since the embryos would be legal persons.

[nobody_really]

Not only will miscarriages be reason to bring criminal charges, IUDs and most hormonal methods of birth control would be illegal, as they prevent implantation of a fertilized egg / blastocyst / embryo. The main backers of this amendment scrubbed their website of the fact they really don't like contraceptives, but not before people got screenshots and sent those shots to the Rachel Maddow show. So, like Santorum said, who was merely echoing Catholic doctrine, use of contraception is a sin to these people, and sin really should be illegal in their eyes.

When Mike Huckabee asked Mitt Romney on Mike's show if he would support a Constitutional Amendment to define personhood as beginning at conception, Romney said "absolutely" without any delay. During a town hall meeting less than a week later, a woman asked him if he really wanted to outlaw contraceptives. Romney said he did not disagree with contraceptives, but he apparently did not understand how the pill works, even after having it explained to him by the questioner. He then said he was against abortion, and then changed the subject.

I see this whole thing as a way to punish women for having sex unless they're willing to pay for that sex with a nine month pregnancy, a painful delivery (it's in the Bible) and another 18 years of child support.

[nobody_really]

First the law gets enforced and innocent people get sent to jail.

Sadly, while there will be victims because of this insanity, I can't help but wonder about the lawmakers finding out that the police in general refuse to enforce this measure (and judges laughing off cases of miscarriage) and they throw a hissy fit. Then the prisoners they wronged band together for a huge class-action lawsuit.

I would like to agree with you here, but Mississippi is a place where a plurality of Republicans think interracial marriage (miscegenation) should be illegal. So I don't think cops would have a problem arresting (poor / dark skinned) people in order to enforce this law. I don't think prosecutors would have a problem indicting and prosecuting women "for being whores." And I don't think there's a shortage of judges who would completely agree with the prosecutors. After all, the intent of the law is to stop the evil of abortions, and what right-thinking American would be against that?

[Lord of the Abyss]

How many policemen would actually bother to haul victims mothers in for "murder"? How many judges won't throw out cases of miscarriage? What jury would rule her guilty?

Relevant article:

Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges

Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion


Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."

Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.

Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.

In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state's "chemical endangerment" law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.

Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way. During her pregnancy her foetus was diagnosed with possible Down's syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination, which Kimbrough declined as she is not in favour of abortion.

The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth.

Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with "chemical endangerment" of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.

"That shocked me, it really did," Kimbrough said. "I had lost a child, that was enough."

She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars. "I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids," she said. "They say I'm a criminal, how do I answer that? I'm a good mother."

Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs' case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.

"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.

McDuff told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. "I hope it's not a trend that's going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme."

He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state's bill of rights to include a foetus from the day of conception.

Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat "as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering".

Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a "depraved heart" or to "harm the foetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance", says the brief.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: "Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute."

Paltrow sees what is happening to Gibbs as a small taste of what would be unleashed were the constitutional right to an abortion ever overturned. "In Mississippi the use of the murder statute is creating a whole new legal standard that makes women accountable for the outcome of their pregnancies and threatens them with life imprisonment for murder."
From protection to punishment

At least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced foetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.

South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy.

In other states laws designed to protect children against the damaging effects of drugs have similarly been twisted to punish childbearers.

[ComradeClaus]

The question is : how do they define human personhood ? If this clone has an altered DNA, they could always try to argue that he isn't really human, and as such isn't covered by this law. If they wanted to be giant hypocritical human supremacists douchebags, I mean.

"Begun, The Clone Wars Has"

In the case of Bei-Bei, she DID attempt to kill herself, that's not quite the same as a miscarriage or abortion. If she had succeeded in the attempt, she'd be dead along w/ the baby. If she didn't atempt to kill herself, her child would've likely lived. I'm sure shell always remember that.

But yeah, these Repubs make me sick, the party has mutated into a facist monstrocity.

Of course, it may be a conspiracy on their part to increase the population of the state & thus it's electoral vote count. Though I doubt such idiots could create such a conspiracy.