Best of "Ranting About Politics" - My Views on Initiative 26

Today, I made the decision to delete my old political ranting blog. It's been over a year since I last posted on it, so I just felt like it was time for it to be retired. But, I did want to preserve a few of my best posts from that blog and post them onto this blog. So, in the coming weeks, I'll be posting these posts here.

The first post in this series is the ever so controversial post I wrote almost a year ago, My Feelings on Initiative 26. I had a lot of comments, both supportive and not so supportive, but it's one of my favorites from all of my blogs. I liked it so much, I even used it as a writing sample for my application to Grad School!

Tuesday, November 8th, Mississippians will be going to the polls to elect a new Governor, Lieutenant Governor, a new Cabinet and a new Legislature. We will also be voting on three amendments to the state constitution. All three of these initiatives are controversial, however one has generated a lot of national news coverage. Ballot Initiative Number 26, also known as the Personhood Amendment, is an amendment to the state constitution that would grant "personhood" to a fetus at the moment of fertilization, effectively ending abortion in the State of Mississippi. This is the first time any state has drafted such an amendment and it has raised many questions here and around the nation.

My greatest concern with the amendment is the way in which it is written, which according to the Secretary of State's website, reads:

"Should the term "person" be defined to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the equivalent there of?"

Legally, the amendment would not outlaw anything. It is simply granting basic human rights to a fetus at the moment of conception, an idea that I support. However, most do not realize what could actually come from all of this, if the amendment becomes law.

In my opinion, there are far too many grey areas in the language of this initiative. When writing it, the authors of the amendment went too far without going far enough. What I mean by that is that the authors could have simply used conception rather than fertilization and left it at that. Or, they could have gone farther and listed all of the exceptions to the amendment, providing protection of in vitro fertilization, giving an exception for rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother, protecting contraceptives, protecting mothers who suffer a miscarriage, and any other exceptions that need addressing. Take a look at the other two initiatives, Initiative 27

(Voter I. D.) and Initiative 31 (Imminent Domain). Both amendments are full of definitive language that clearly states the intent of the amendment and lists exceptions to it. But the writers chose not to do this with Personhood and so we are left with an initiative that is full of ambiguity, and because of this ambiguous language, it will be left to the Legislature to pass legislation to govern the new law. What that legislation will be, who knows? We will have to pass it in order to see what is in it. Sound familiar?

I understand what the proponents of the Personhood Amendment are trying to do. Their goal is to get a purposefully ambiguous initiative passed and enacted so that its opponents will challenge the law in Federal court. Through appeal, the case would ultimately lead to the Supreme Court, forcing the Court to re-debate precedent that would hopefully lead to the demise of Roe v. Wade. This is something that I would love to see as well. However, I just don't feel comfortable giving a government... ANY government... such broad powers over a critical aspect of a person's life. It is for this reason that I am against this amendment and will be voting No on Initiative 26.