A probably successful effort to amend Mississippi's Constitution would confer personhood on fertilized human eggs, affording them thereby all of the protections of the laws that apply to post-birth people. I wonder if the proponents have thought through the details. Probably not. Thinking isn't big down there. Let's think about some implications, shall we? I am sure you have thought of more.
I read this in today's NYT and was surprised to see no diary on it. The rest of you usually seem quicker off the mark than me:
A constitutional amendment facing voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8, and similar initiatives brewing in half a dozen other states including Florida and Ohio, would declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person, effectively branding abortion and some forms of birth control as murder.
It occurred to me that, if such a status is to be conferred upon the fetus all the way back to the stage of the zygote, then clearly some forms of contraception will be outlawed. But beyond that, if a woman suffers a miscarriage, she will have to report it just as she would the death of an infant and the miscarried remains would have to be buried after filing of a death certificate. In cases where the cause of the miscarriage is unknown or occurs under suspicious circumstances, the medical examiner would have to be called in and an autopsy commissioned. Since the majority of pregnancies actually end in early miscarriage, the State of Mississippi is going to have a lot of extra work as is the funeral business. I wonder if they have thought about that. A woman might be strenuously opposed to abortion, but she would still have to deal with the complicated legal aftermath of a miscarriage. Quite a burden on a grieving would-be mom.
What's next, Mississippi? Witch-burning?