As yet one more tragic misstep in the misguided “right-to-life” movement, Mississippi is on the threshold of declaring through a Constitutional Amendment that life begins at conception, often thought of as the moment when the sperm fertilizes the egg.
This makes miscarriage murder. It makes many forms of birth control illegal. If a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, she could be forced choose between dying or being charged with murder if she has an abortion.
The terrible irony is that something like 10-15% of pregnancies naturally end in miscarriage.. Many, many more conceptions do not implant. Mississippi is about to declare God to be a mass murderer.
Ectopic pregnancy occurs in 2% of pregnancies. It causes 9% of all pregnancy-related deaths. It is not possible to save the fetus. This is a clear case when the mother’s life is at stake, and there is nothing to be gained by denying her an abortion.
Many kinds of birth control involve preventing a fertilized egg from implanting. As mentioned, nature does this on its own quite often. But methods like the IUD and the Pill prevent implantation.
There is another interesting legal implications of Mississippi’s proposed Constitutional amendment. Should a human clone ever be produced, it would not be a human being. It would be “legal”, in the sense of adhering to an unconstitutional (not to mention insane) law, to re-introduce slavery, since clones are not conceived.
Come to think of it, one identical twin might not be human, since there’s one conception, but two beings. One is just a…clone. And once again, God is to blame.
This is not a pro-life amendment. It is blind narcissism.
The forces of sanity are weak in Mississippi. We can help our brothers and sisters through Vote No on 26.org. But time is short. There is just over a week until the vote.
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Added: here is a link describing the precise legal definition of “conception.” According to Philip Peters, Jr. of UC Davis, conception occurs within about 48 hours of fertilization, while implantation requires about two weeks from insemination.
Added: The language of the amendment does explicitly include clones as human beings. It’s kind of hard to see how this works, since there’s no real moment of conception when John-sub-1 is split from John. Cells split all the time. What’s the difference between a cloned cell and a shed cell?
Mercury Rising 鳯女 