Personhood Revisited

So the Personhood Amendment failed in Missisippi, thank goodness.

For a little wrap-up analysis, I enjoyed this article. Here's an excerpt of something I found particularly disturbing:

If Personhood USA doesn't have popular support even among conservatives, at least they have high profile politicians willing to pay them lip service. The degree of disconnect between what politicians say they believe and what voters actually want has reached nearly comical levels. In the Mississippi gubernatorial race, both the defeated Democrat Johnny Dupree and the victorious Republican Phil Bryant publicly supported the Personhood amendment. As Salon's Irin Carmon points out, it was difficult to find more than a handful of public officials willing to publicly declare that they were opposed to personhood in the state. Out of step support for the measure doesn't stop there, though; GOP Presidential field (with the exception of poor forgotten Jon Huntsman) has reached a general consensus that personhood is a dandy idea. Even Mitt Romney, who this side of the airing of the last episode of The Wonder Years was speaking out in favor of abortion rights, has said he would sign personhood legislation into law as the country's executive.

Not to sound like a campaign ad, but if candidates of a major party feel compelled to align themselves with an ideology that is too extreme for even America's most conservative state, something is amiss.

For now, at least, let's hope politicians have gotten the hint that people simply aren't interested in inviting the government any further into our reproductive organs. Let's enjoy the rueful sense of victory that comes from being declared more important than a fetus by ballot initiative. And let's ponder the irony of an organization that believes that life begins at the moment of conception, yet doesn't believe that the game ends after they've clearly lost.

Sighs all around.