A new push to define 'person,' and to outlaw abortion in the process

Latimes.com

A new push to define 'person,' and to outlaw abortion in the process

Some abortion foes think the rationale for Roe vs. Wade is vulnerable. They're trying to amend state constitutions -- including California's -- to define personhood from conception.

By Robin Abcarian

September 28, 2009


It is one of the enduring questions of religion and science, and lately of American politics: When does a fertilized egg become a person?

Abortion foes, tired of a profusion of laws that limit but do not abolish abortion, are trying to answer the question in a way that they hope could put an end to legalized abortion.

Across the country, they have revived efforts to amend state constitutions to declare that personhood -- and all rights accorded human beings -- begins at conception.

From Florida to California, abortion foes are gathering signatures, pressing state legislators and raising money to put personhood measures on ballots next year. In Louisiana, a class at a Catholic high school is lobbying state legislators as part of a civics exercise.

"We have big and small efforts going on in 30 states right now," said Keith Mason, co-founder of Colorado-based Personhood USA. "Our goal is to activate the population."

Critics deride the effort as the "egg-as-person" movement and say it threatens in vitro fertilization; some kinds of birth control, including IUDs and pills; and stem cell research. They say that Americans will reject it as a government intrusion into their privacy.

"It's a backdoor abortion ban," said Ted Miller, spokesman for NARAL Pro-Choice America, which has worked with Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups to defeat such measures.

Since the mid-1970s, polls have found that about three-quarters of Americans support legalized abortion in at least some circumstances.

But this year, for the first time since the Gallup Poll started asking people in 1995 whether they identified themselves as "pro-life" or "pro-choice," a slight majority of Americans (51%) picked "pro-life."

Proponents of personhood measures root their hopes in the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, in which Justice Harry Blackmun wrote for the majority that a fetus is not legally a person.

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