Mississippi Personhood Amendment

[yukinoomoni]

Originally posted by the_flowergirl at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by jade_mushroom at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting very little no attention in the mainstream media.

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.

Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.

Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.

What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.

If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.

What to do?

- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.

- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.

- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.

- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.

Omoni's Note: Abortion is a sticky issue no matter what the deal is, but this, to me, stinks of misogyny. This is just another method of taking away women's rights, and the fact that they would criminalise a woman who had a miscarriage is just ... mind-boggling. I strongly urge any or all of you to do what you can, because if this passes in Mississippi, the likelihood of other States (and soon provinces here in Canada) following suit goes up a great deal. I don't want that to happen. Ever. And neither should any of you.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Donation sent - and someone actually wrote back to me!

[moiraj.livejournal.com]

I agree, this is horrible, and I hope it gets stopped cold, because, yes if it happens in Mississippi, it increases the chances of it happening in other parts of the States.

Unlikely it could happen here, though, not without decades of other legal changes (backwards) happening first. The US is weird about giving someone something and then whipping it right back. California recognizes the right of gay people to marry and then suddenly they don't have it anymore? That makes no legal sense. And the articles I've been reading about this seems to state that the right to abortion is synonymous to the Roe v Wade case. And maybe it is, I haven't read any of that. But here, the rights to an abortion and to make various life choices are tied up in a bunch of cases and laws. You'd have to go after all of them. Finally, this isn't something that could happen here on a provincial level, it would need to go federal. I am horrified and baffled that in American a single state can create its own definition of life that differs from the rest of the country.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Urgh. What is this? This isn't even about abortion anymore. It's about controlling women. It's the good old misogynistic "a woman is only as good as her uterus" deal.