GOP Reproductive Ideology: Ridicule Is The Only Weapon

Between trans-vaginal ultrasound legislation and personhood initiatives, it is clear that the GOP is completely off the rails. One might think the train has stopped in the 18th century.

Thomas Jefferson once said, "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions." It's nice to see that the spirit of Jefferson lives on in halls of legislation (even though many conservatives would like to forget about him).

Take Yasmin Neal of the Georgia House of Representatives. In response to the insane attacks on women's reproductive rights, she authored a bill that would ban vasectomies.

"Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies," wrote Neal in a statement. "It is patently unfair that men can avoid unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such maters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly, while women's ability to decide is constantly up for debate throughout the United States."

Beautiful.

Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams added, "What is more deplorable is the hypocrisy of HB 954's author. If we follow his logic, we believe it is the obligation of the General Assembly to assert an equally invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men and substitute the will of the government over the will of men."

This came on the heels of another bit of legislation-as-ridicule, this time out of Oklahoma.

State Sen. Constance Johnson proposed an amendment to Oklahomas' personhood bill. The amendment was referred to as the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" Bill, after the brilliant Monty Python song from 'Monty Python's Meaning of Life.'

The amendment states, "[A]ny action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child."

It's a slippery slope.

The Good News - Election Edition: Science, Reason, Sanity Win In Landslide

In our ongoing, but much-too-infrequent series highlighting good news, we look at Tuesday's election results, which were resounding victories for science, reason, and sanity.

America spoke on Tuesday, and, for the most part, we were very clear in communicating that we are not as racist, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-science, or as crazy, as our politicians.

A few highlights:

• The ludicrous Mississippi 'personhood' amendment, which would have legally defined a fertilized egg as a 'person,' and which would have outlawed abortion completely, in all instances, was rejected by more than 55 percent of voters. (CBS News)

• Ohio voters rejected the recent GOP-backed collective bargaining law, which would "prevent public-employee unions from collective bargaining, prohibit strikes and force teachers, police offers and firefighters to contribute a set amount toward their health benefits and pensions." (Time)

• In Maine, voters rejected the ban on same-day voter registration, which the state's Republican Party claimed was 'gay.' (Sun Journal)

• In North Carolina, where voters will decide on a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in May, five openly gay candidates had victories. This fact should worry any Republican who thinks the May 8 amendment is in the bag. (QNotes)

• Openly gay candidates fared well in other states as well, including races in Texas, Ohio, Montana, and Iowa. Progress. (LGBTNation)

• Democrat Adam Ebbin became Virginia's first openly gay state senator, defeating Republican challenger Timothy McGhee by a margin of 64 percent to 35 percent. Pwned. (Washington Blade)

• In Wake County, North Carolina, Kevin Hill defeated challenger Heather Losurdo in a contentious school board race, tipping the balance of power from the Tea Party-sympathizing Republicans, who took control in 2009 on a platform of doing away with the district's highly regarded racial and socioeconomic desegregation program. (WTVD-ABC)

• In Arizona, the state senator who wrote Arizona's controversial immigration law was defeated in a contentious recall election. (CNN)

The message from Tuesday's election results should be pretty clear: "If you overreach, you will be punished."

Mississippi's 'Personhood' Amendment Is Ludicrous (It May Be Coming to Your State, Too)

Update: The Mississippi personhood amendment was defeated on Tuesday, Nov. 8, but other efforts are underway in other states. This initiative is not going away anytime soon.

A blastocyst (aka 'person') on the tip of a pin

Mississippi is on the verge of passing a constitutional amendment that would define a person as a fertilized egg.

The so-called "personhood" amendment is on the November 8 ballot, and according to the most recent polling, it is very likely to pass.

This should be ridiculously alarming to anyone who is not completely out of touch with reality. Not only would the amendment have cascading legal implications, it would also have serious impact on the health and rights of all women. In addition, the amendment endorses all sorts of religious ideas, whether or not those are defined in the legislation.

Slate served up a slightly humorous, yet incredibly scary, list of legal questions that would arise from the legislation, including the following:

If you are legal person at fertilization, does that mean you could drink at 20 years and three months? Could you drive at 15 and three months? Could you vote at age 17, and collect Social Security at 64?

For legal purposes, would your birthday still be your “birth” day? Or your fertilization day?

Could you arrest women for smoking or drinking while pregnant? Could the state file a child abuse case against a mother who didn’t wear a seatbelt or otherwise endangered her fetus?

If a doctor doesn't take all possible steps to stop a miscarriage, would that be manslaughter?

Could you post ultrasound photos of your fetus (naked) on Facebook? Or would that be child pornography?

Would you be an American citizen if you were conceived in Mississippi but born elsewhere? Could there be “anchor babies” whose parents come to the United States, have sex, and then return home to Mexico for their baby’s birth?

If a woman eats food contaminated by Listeria and miscarries, could the agribusiness be prosecuted for murder?

What about ectopic pregnancies? If the embryo is not removed, it could kill the mother. Should the mother or the doctor be prosecuted for manslaughter if they remove it? Maybe it would be fairer to prosecute the embryo. If the fertilized egg is a person, isn't that person trying to commit murder-suicide?

Granted, some of these examples seem silly. But their ludicrousness underscores a few things: A) Such an extreme and broad amendment has huge implications on the interpretation of the law moving forward, and B) The amendment is ludicrous from the get-go.

Let's look at the human blastocyst. (By definition of the personhood amendment, a blastocyst would now constitute a person.)

Neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris wrote about blastocysts in relation to the ethics of stem cell research, but his arguments are just as apt in debating 'personhood':

A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. [These] human embryos...do not have brains, or even neurons....Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings. This is a fact. The argument from a cell's potential gets you absolutely nowhere.

Sure, a fertilized egg has the potential to become a human being. But we must also remember that an acorn is not a tree. It has the potential to become a tree, sure. We must take into consideration the fact that trees evolved to overcompensate -- to produce acorns that outnumber the trees that result from those acorns. This is how nature works.

Twenty percent of all pregnancies result in miscarriage. If all fertilized eggs are 'people,' then 20 percent of all people are killed before they are born. Will there be investigations to determine who was responsible for the untimely death of 1/5 of all 'people' in Mississippi? Will every woman who suffers a miscarriage be interrogated? If it was natural, is God the most prolific serial murderer in Mississippi's history?

Now that I've brought religion into the picture (how can one not?), let's look at this business of souls. Harris writes:

But let us assume, for the moment, that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming separate people (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single individual, called a chimera. You or someone you know may have developed in this way. No doubt theologians are struggling even now to determine what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case.

Isn't it time we admitted that this arithmetic of souls does not make any sense? The naive idea of souls...is intellectually indefensible.

The vote occurring in Mississippi should be very concerning to anyone who cares about privacy, science, liberty, and the enforcement of religious ideology as law. This amendment would ban all abortions, including those that result from incest and rape. It would ban IUDs and 'morning-after pills.' It would render embryonic stem cell research illegal. It would hamper in-vitro fertilization treatment.

God granting personhood to a blastocyst (artist rendering)

And, if successful, it will serve as a template for similar amendments across the country (there are already efforts brewing in Florida, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Wisconsin and other states), and passage could fundamentally transform the entire framework of laws in each state.

But what should be most troubling about this amendment is it attempts to define legally something which has yet to be defined by science. There is no consensus whatsoever as to when 'life' begins. There is no consensus on the definition of 'life,' in reproductive terms. The legislation attempts to define life in language that is in no way scientific. What it attempts to do is say that a bolt comes down from on high at the moment a sperm fertilizes an egg, and transforms it into a person.

This is supernaturalism, it's not supported by science, and it's about to become law.