"Personhood"

So today on the drive home, I was listening to NPR and I heard a lot of discussion of Mississippi's new "Personhood amendment."

Basically, this amendment would define "personhood" as beginning at conception. The biggest implication of that is that anything that interferes with the zygote/embryo/fetus' growth and development could be legally considered assault, involuntary manslaughter, or homicide. That includes many types of normal, everyday birth control, such as Plan B and IUDs. If someone is raped, they would be unable to use the morning-after pill. They would also be unable to receive an abortion. If a woman miscarried for any reason that could possibly be construed as "her fault," including things like exercising, she would be guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Not only that, but this amendment would also interfere with many fertility treatments, denying children to infertile couples who desperately want to raise a child. It would interfere with stem cell research, which is being used, to, oh, you know, cure disease and stuff. Oh yeah, and it would also make any kind of abortion—whether elective or medical—illegal.

Here's the thing: people have different ideas of where life begins. Is it at the first breath? First heartbeat? Conception? "When the mother feels life come to her infant"? When it starts to look like a person?

I've heard people defend using conception as the start of life, but it has always seemed really arbitrary to me. People say, "Well, fertilization is the point when you get something with the potential to become a human, with feelings and the ability to contribute to the world." Of course zygotes have the potential to become humans. Sure, but before it can become a real human, a little conceptus still needs to get to the uterus, it needs to have a perfectly hospitable environment there, it needs to have no major genetic flaws (which can cause spontaneous miscarriage), it needs to be kept free from teratogens, it needs adequate nourishment, it needs to develop in all the right ways, and it needs to survive labor and delivery. So sure, the potential is there, but there are a whole lot of intervening steps.

You know what else has the potential to become a human? Unfertilized eggs! And the sperm that never saw them! Compared to the fertilized egg, these only require one more step (the fertilization itself) in the path to becoming a full-fledged human. So as long as we're being arbitrary, why not draw the line there? What's so magical about the cortical reaction that makes two cells suddenly become a "person"? Why not mourn over the loss of potential life that every period or wet dream represents?

And furthermore, why do people care about this? Why would anyone welcome the government into our medical exams, into our bedrooms, into our families? And why is it that the same people who demand protection for little cell accumulations are often the same ones who want to deny privileges like affordable housing, healthcare, and education to actual human adults, who, unlike zygotes, have brains and feelings? Why is it that so many conservatives rail against the government regulating our lives, and yet so many of them demand that the government involve itself in our most private, personal decisions, like when and how to bear children? I seriously cannot understand it.

I think this whole debacle is just a result of people trying to legislate their religious opinions. You guys. That is a sucky thing to do. If we start doing this, then the minute the majority has a religious opinion that doesn't coincide with yours, you're screwed. I think we have to accept the fact that no matter how strongly you know that your religion is true, someone else feels just as strongly about their own different religion. Do you want them feeling entitled to turn their moral opinions into laws that affect you, just because they feel strongly about it? Come on, guys. This is the opposite of what our country is about.

Ok, this is starting to get off-topic. But I think that one of the reasons why the Personhood amendment is so repellent to me is that people are basically drawing a random, arbitrary line in the sand, but instead of quietly living by their arbitrary sand-line and trying to do what they think is right in their own lives, for some reason, they're trying to make their arbitrary line affect me and limit what I'm legally allowed to do. It doesn't matter whether I even wanted to get an abortion or use those particular types of birth control or ever get fertility treatments; I still say no thank you to being subject to someone else's morals! As long my moral decisions don't hurt organisms with brains and pain receptors (cough, cough, this doesn't include zygotes), I want to be able to choose what I want, and I think other people deserve that same privilege.

This post is really just about my feelings on the Personhood amendment. I have mixed feelings about abortion in general—personally, I find the idea of abortion repellent, but I also feel that making birth control and abortions safe and accessible will go a very long way toward reducing the suffering of men and women who don't want to be pregnant, and also toward reducing the suffering of babies and children who would otherwise have to be born to parents who didn't want them and/or couldn't care for them. And isn't reducing suffering one of the best ways to make the world a better place?

I don't know. Again, I have mixed feelings about elective abortions, but strong feelings against the arbitrary invasion of privacy and independence that Mississippi's Personhood amendment represents.

First Post

I've been thinking a lot about blogging more. I have a 20-minute drive to get to school every morning, and when I actually get to school, I'm so full of thoughts that I really just want to write something when I arrive. Problems: my old blog is basically inactive, I had too many things to say for a facebook status update, and I don't tweet. Solution: start a new blog! And put Michael's name in it! I figure since every newlywed couple starts a blog together, we may as well get a head start on this (our wedding isn't until December, but whatever).

Anyway, on my drive to school, there's a point where the highway curves around and suddenly there's an awesome view of the Columbus skyline. It approaches from the west, so depending on how early/late I left that morning, I sometimes get to see the skyscrapers outlined against a brilliant sunrise. Today everything was foggy, so I got to see these fog-shrouded giants rising out of the ground, silhouetted against these vast stretches of low-lying magenta clouds. It was really something to see. I was sad when my exit came.