The North Dakota House of Representatives has passed the first personhood amendment in the United States, 57-35. Read more
Mississippi
Chet Gallagher arrested outside Mississippi's only abortuary
Heather Clark at Christian News reports of the arrest of pro-life activist, preacher and former policeman Chet Gallagher. The entire article is worth reading as it tells of Mr. Gallagher's final days as a police officer when he refused to arrest pro-life protesters who were blocking an abortion clinic. Watch the brief video of Mr. Gallagher's arrest. It doesn't appear that the police had any cause.
There's a lot of action at that baby-killing center. See Three pro-lifers attacked outside Mississippi abortion clinic
Personhood Mississippi introduces new Personhood initiative
Personhood Mississippi has introduced a new citizens’ initiative:
The right to life begins at conception. All human beings, at every stage of development, are unique, created in God’s image and shall have an inalienable right to life.
The previous initiative, which lost in the 2011 election, stated it this way:
The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.
Some pro-life folks voted NO in 2011 because they thought the proposed amendment condoned cloning. Governor Haley Barbour complained that the wording was confusing. Even though the Governor voted YES, the pro-aborts ran a last-minute robo-call with the audio of Haley Barbour’s concerns. Pro-aborts rode bogus pro-life concerns all the way to victory.
The new language, interestingly (perhaps intentionally?), directly addresses one of Haley Barbour’s statements. He said “I believe that life begins at conception. Unfortunately, this Personhood amendment doesn’t say that”. Well there it is in the new proposal.
Watch out for confused people, such as Wesley J. Smith, who will claim that the initiative’s mention of “created in God’s image” violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Though written to address Mr. Smith’s complaints about a South Carolina bill, the lower part of this rebuttal also applies to this Mississippi initiative.
Once the Mississippi folks get the necessary signatures, the amendment will go on the ballot, probably in 2015. They need 12% of the number of people who voted in the previous gubernatorial election which is 107,216 valid signatures.
Personhood Mississippi Files New Personhood Amendment
Jackson, Mississippi – 03/05/2013 – Today, Mississippi resident and post abortive mother Anne Reed filed a Life at Conception Citizen’s Initiative, which states:
“The right to life begins at conception. All human beings, at every stage of development, are unique, created in God’s image and shall have equal rights as persons under the law.”
“This amendment is a common sense approach to protecting both babies and women from the devastation of abortion,” stated Reed. “I was a volunteer for personhood in the last election, and I believe it is critical that we try again. This time we intend to fight back against the lies of our wealthy pro-abortion opponents. We will be proactive in educating Mississippi voters as to the full intent and resulting effects of this amendment.”
The new amendment, filed today, will go to the Secretary of State’s office. Once the ballot title and summary have been finalized, ballot sponsors will have twelve months to collect nearly 108,000 signatures.
In 2010, Personhood Mississippi submitted about 40,000 signatures more than the required number.
“When abortion was legalized in Mississippi, there was very little information available about the child in the womb,” explained Jennifer Mason, Personhood USA spokesperson. “Since 1973 there have been amazing developments in technology and medicine. We now know without question that the child in the womb is not just tissue, but a living, growing human being. Women deserve better than outdated speculation about pregnancy. The question is not whether or not the child in the womb is a person – the question is whether or not we will protect them.”
Liberty Counsel’s renowned Constitutional Attorney Steve Crampton added, “There is nothing controversial about these propositions. Our opponents will try to scare voters with ridiculous hypotheticals about what this amendment will do. I want to set the record straight about what it WON’T do. The Personhood Amendment won’t ban in vitro fertilization; it won’t ban contraception; it won’t deny healthcare to women; and it won’t put doctors at risk of prosecution for unintended injury to an unborn child. What it will do is recognize the most basic of all human rights, the right to life, for all human beings, born and unborn.”
Personhood Mississippi to hold telephone news conference for new amendment
JACKSON, Miss., March 4, 2013 — /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Personhood Mississippi will hold a telephone news conference on Tuesday March 5 to announce the filing of a new personhood amendment.
The amendment will be filed by a new sponsor and is worded differently than the 2011 personhood amendment.
Who: Personhood Mississippi Amendment Sponsors
What: Personhood Mississippi Telephone News Conference
When: Tuesday March 5 at 2:30 p.m. CST
Members of the press can call at 2:30 p.m. Central Time. All callers will be pre-screened and will have the opportunity to ask questions at the close of the call.
Please register to participate and/or listen to the press conference at this link: https://www.accuconference.com/customer/Registration/index.aspx?pkRegQG=...
Personhood Mississippi Press Conference
SOURCE Personhood USA
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/03/04/5235543/personhood-mississippi-to-hold….
New Hampshire reps want to officially celebrate abortion
In New Hampshire, some legislators have introduced a resolution to celebrate abortion and Roe v. Wade. House Resolution 6 would have no effect in law; It’s simpy a gratuitous insult on pro-lifers and the value of human life. If you need an emetic, read the resolution. Honey, little Joey just swallowed some rat poison, get over here quick with Resolution 6!
The propaganda is thick. HR 6 calls abortion a “personal medical decision”, “a safe and legal decision” “an enhancement [for] health” and “a deeply personal and often complex decision” that “strengthens families”.
I have to agree that abortion is personal – for the baby on receiving end of the knife. I know I’d find it personal – deeply personal – if someone was ripping me apart limb from limb.
Pro-aborts always want to claim that killing babies “strengthens families”. The pro-abortion front group that opposed the Mississippi Personhood Amendment calls itself “Mississippians for Healthy Families”. In South Dakota, it’s the “South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families”. Because everybody knows that killing children is key to a healthy family.
Side effects central to defeating Personhood
Here is the abstract of a pro-abortion paper that tells pro-aborts how to defeat Personhood initiatives. I think the author has a good point when she writes:
“I suggest that voters’ recognition of the implications of personhood legislation for health issues other than abortion may have led to personhood’s defeat.”
Exactly. Pro-aborts would have lost in Mississippi, if the issue was just abortion. But instead pro-aborts talked about anything but abortion. They needed to sow seeds of doubt regarding a slew of other issues. And pro-aborts didn’t care if truth was on their side. They were good at it. Pro-aborts made ridiculous claims that Personhood would ban IVF, women wouldn’t be able to get life-saving treatment and women would be investigated for miscarriages.
Personhood initiatives promote the simple principle that human rights begin when each human being beings her life. The initiatives haven't addressed these other issues. So, pro-aborts felt quite free to make up all sorts of scare tactics regarding what this recognition of human rights implies. Personhood initiatives will only win when we’re able to combat the lies and clarify the initiatives' true effects.
Three pro-lifers attacked outside Mississippi abortion clinic
This article details that:
Three Christians in Mississippi were hospitalized this morning after being incapacitated with pepper spray by a guard as they sang hymns outside of the last abortion facility in the state.
Cal Zastrow has been a solid pro-life protester for a long time. He's quite accustomed to the hate and hostility from those who support killing the innocent. Keep up the great work, Mr. Zastrow.
Baby killers in Mississippi are worried about losing the state's sole remaining abortion clinic. Apparently, the abortion mill will have problems meeting new regulation requirements passed by the legislature last year.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/01/mississippi-and-state-abortion-4...
We should celebrate everytime an abortion clinic closes its doors.
Planned Parenthood Consultant tell-all packed with lies to Mississippi voters
A Huffington Post article titled “How to Defeat PersonhoodUSA”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-stanford/personhood-mississippi_b_1191443.html spilled the beans yesterday by printing a laundry list of lies from Planned Parenthood to Mississippi voters - all the while claiming that these lies were part of “honest conversations.” The article, an obvious puff piece for Planned Parenthood Consultant Sarah Flowers, railed against Personhood Amendments nationwide.
From the article: “Husbands, said Flowers, had another reaction that dealt with ‘the condom part. In some cases, men would make the association that no birth control pills mean condoms or no sex.’”
Is Sarah actually admitting that they allowed men to believe that condoms would be outlawed by the Personhood Amendment? Worse, that some men believed that banning chemical abortions could somehow equal zero contraception whatsoever, leading to forced abstinence? These are scare tactics at their worst. Granted, it’s not a bad thing to recognize where babies come from, but just imagine your average hard-working Christian man in Mississippi. He’s married, and suddenly told that if Amendment 26 passes, he might be locked out of the bedroom. When Personhood groups encountered false impressions among voters, we set them straight. No surprise, it looks as if Planned Parenthood didn’t bother to do the same - in fact, it appears they were more than willing to propagate false information to voters.
These kinds of lies are insidious – specifically tailored and targeted to vulnerable audiences, including prolife Mississippi voters. Planned Parenthood certainly did their homework on which deceptions would most affect Mississippi voters, and then they went to town. Funded almost entirely by out of state Planned Parenthood groups, No on 26 did more than just talk to voters – they lied to them. http://www.personhoodusa.com/press-release/new-poll-reveals-real-reason-...
It gets worse. The article continues,
“While conservative voters approached personhood as an abortion issue, conversations got them thinking about their lives. Doctors worried about committing a crime if they didn’t know whether an unconscious patient was pregnant…This issue brings out a lot of protectiveness that fathers feel toward their daughters and husbands feel for their wives,’ said Flowers who cited a nightmarish list of what-ifs that included detached placentas and ectopic pregnancies. These men did not want the criminal code to prevent doctors from saving the lives of their daughters and wives.’ “
Apparently, writer Stanford failed to do his research, and Planned Parenthood Consultant Flowers deliberately lied to voters with her “nightmarish list of what-ifs”. In Mississippi in particular, there wasn’t even a question of doctors being at risk, as Mississippi law already exempts physicians from being prosecuted in cases of ectopic pregnancy or if they were to “prescribe a medication fatal to an unborn baby to treat a female patient whose pregnancy was unknown and was not reasonably discoverable.”
Mississippi laws directly prohibits criminal charges against Doctors who don’t know whether an unconscious patient is pregnant. Why, then, did Planned Parenthood tell Mississippi voters that their lives would be in danger? That their doctors would be in danger? Even demonstrably false statements from Planned Parenthood are being printed and published with no consequences.
The article goes on to imply that it was Personhood USA who decided that life begins at fertilization. While we would be thrilled to have brilliant bioethicists and embryologists on staff, alas, we cannot take credit for the scientific standard of when life begins. The issue of when life begins is not a personal choice, or a moral consideration – it is absolute scientific fact.
I have long known that abortion industry mega-giant Planned Parenthood is in the business of protecting their pockets by any means necessary – and with the power of millions of our tax dollars behind them. But I certainly never expected a tell-all in the Huffington Post – after all, admitting that you’re using my tax dollars to deceive people is pretty gutsy. Abortion supporters must be pretty comfortable in their untouchable status to declare war on truth in such a terrible way.
The Abortion Industry disrespects women in many ways, all of them deceitful. It claims that women are not capable of pregnancy or raising children amidst difficult circumstances. It claims that the child in their womb is not a child, but tissue or “product”. I could go on and on. Now, it seems, Planned Parenthood is reveling in its deliberate dissemination of scare tactics and outright lies, claiming that it was all part of “having honest conversations with voters.”
It will always be a difficult battle to take on a billion-dollar abortion machine like Planned Parenthood. While they may be able to outspend us, we have truth on our side and are absolutely determined that the real honest conversations with voters will be led by Personhood Mississippi. Knowing that it was lies that defeated us only makes us stronger, because such a defeat can only be temporary. In the days and weeks following the Mississippi Personhood campaign, both Personhood Mississippi and Personhood USA have grown exponentially, which we believe is due in part to angry Mississippians who have discovered that they were lied to by Planned Parenthood, and due wholly to God’s blessing on a movement to protect every single human person, in the womb or out of it, regardless of their age, race, size, location, or circumstances of their conception.
Jennifer Mason
Personhood USA
Loss steels resolve in ‘personhood’ movement
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/4/loss-steels-resolve-in-pe…
Anti-abortion activists ‘ready to press forward’
By Cheryl Wetzstein
The Washington Times
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Story Topics
Social Issues Jennifer Mason Les Riley Personhood Usa Personhood MississippiThe Nov. 8 defeat of the “personhood” amendment in Mississippi is galvanizing supporters to have a do-over in the state and also push measures in Colorado, Virginia and at least eight other states, say leaders of the anti-abortion movement.
“I can tell you that we are going to press forward. … We’ve got plans to continue a massive grass-roots campaign,” as well as work with the legislature, said Les Riley, leader of Personhood Mississippi.
“We realize we are changing a culture, and we can’t expect to change the culture with one election. That’s why we are willing to do this as many times as it takes,” said Jennifer Mason, spokeswoman for Personhood USA, which supports coast-to-coast measures seeking to establish human rights at conception.
Petition drives for personhood measures are taking shape or are under way in California, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Nevada, Ohio and Oregon. In addition, lawmakers in Wisconsin and Virginia have introduced personhood legislation, while lawmakers in Georgia have announced plans to do so.
Those amendments will likely face fierce opposition from pro-choice groups — and some pro-life groups.
“Right-wing extremists intend to put so-called ‘personhood’ amendments on as many state ballots as they can,” the National Organization for Women said in a recent year-end fundraising appeal to supporters.
“Enactment of the so-called ‘Personhood’ Amendment to the Wisconsin state constitution is a threat to the protection of Wisconsin unborn children,” Wisconsin Right to Life said after a group of lawmakers introduced a personhood bill last month.
To many pro-life leaders, however, personhood is the battleground of the 21st century.
Emerging issues such as cloning, embryo experimentation and euthanasia necessitate ensuring the right to life for human beings, “womb to tomb,” say personhood supporters such as Georgia Right to Life President Daniel Becker.
“The pro-life movement must mature beyond the singular goal of ‘saving babies’ and engage our current ‘culture of death,’ ” Mr. Becker wrote in his book on personhood this year. “Personhood is the means.”
The stunning defeat of Mississippi’s Amendment 26 — 58 percent of voters rejected it although it was expected to pass handily in the strongly pro-life state — revealed numerous campaign weaknesses.
Personhood Mississippi polled about 10,000 people after the vote, Mr. Riley said. Surprisingly, the biggest reason people voted “no” on personhood was fear that it would prevent infertile couples from using in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to have a baby. Another big fear was that a personhood amendment would prevent pregnant women from getting lifesaving medical treatment.
Those and other fears were advanced by media campaigns, billboards and materials distributed by opponents of Amendment 26 — Mississippians for Healthy Families collected more than $1 million, mostly from Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its chapters, to defeat the amendment.
After the vote, though, a lot of people felt they were deceived, Mr. Riley said. Many have called to say they regret voting no and say, “I want to help you next time,”he said.
The Colorado amendment for 2012 reflects some lessons learned: It clarifies that “only birth control that kills a person” and “only in-vitro fertilization and assisted reproduction that kills a person” would be affected by the amendment and that it does not prevent medical treatment for life-threatening conditions such as cancer, ectopic pregnancies and placenta previa.
“We think that by including a little more information to prohibit our opposition from using these scare tactics will benefit us, while easing voters’ minds,” said Mrs. Mason, who is married to Personhood USA President Keith Mason.
The Colorado amendment’s new language “is an obvious effort to address some of the weaknesses in past proposals and be more clear about what the intent is,” said Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at Americans United for Life, which, he said, takes a “state-by-state” approach on whether to support personhood amendments.
But such detail surely will open the Colorado personhood campaign to political debates on each of those points, he said. “It won’t be just an abortion issue; it will be an IVF issue. … You will have a campaign on every subsection of it.”
Mrs. Mason is undeterred, saying she thinks young Americans are ready to push forward with personhood.
“I feel like my [baby boomer] parents’ generation had time to change Roe v. Wade and fight against it, and nothing happened,” she said. “Believe me, we have the most volunteers of any pro-life group in the country. And most of these volunteers are young people who want to see a change.”
New Poll Reveals Real Reason Behind Mississippi Personhood Loss
Following the defeat of Personhood Amendment 26, Personhood Mississippi commissioned a post-election poll to determine what factors influenced voters. Surprisingly, the poll determined that only 8% of those who voted “no” did so because they are pro-choice.
The nation has watched the Mississippi election closely, and there has been much speculation as to what may have caused the unanticipated defeat. Proponents were repeatedly quoted as saying that the amendment could not ban in vitro fertilization, contraception, or healthcare for women. Their statements were correlated by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, along with many other prominent Mississippi attorneys, doctors, and politicians.
Yet, despite these expert statements and testimonies as to the effects of Amendment 26, Planned Parenthood (under the guise of Mississippians for Healthy Families), persisted in lying to Mississippi voters, propagating scare tactics that were proven false numerous times. As of October 31, with well over a week to go before the election, they reported a hefty $1,030,000 poured into Mississippi from out of state Planned Parenthood affiliates alone.
“Planned Parenthood pulled the wool over the eyes of Mississippians, and I believe that voters will be shocked to learn the truth,” commented Les Riley, founder of Personhood Mississippi and sponsor of the initiative. “They must have been desperate to lie about so many things so often. But beyond the lies, it’s terrible to know that they likely used my own tax dollars to lie to the people of my state. Planned Parenthood reports over $350 million in government funding, and it appears they used well over a million of their government dollars to lie to people in Mississippi.”
The new poll reveals that Planned Parenthood’s willful deceit, which also raised doubts in the mind of Governor Haley Barbour, caused the defeat of Amendment 26.
Governor Barbour previously stated that he had concerns about the amendment, all of which were the same issues that Planned Parenthood used to deceive voters. Barbour did vote “yes” on the amendment, yet even after he announced that he had voted “yes” Planned Parenthood persisted in running television ads and telephone calls misleading voters to believe he had voted “no.” As a result, 12% of voters polled said that they were swayed to vote “no” by Haley Barbour.
Among the most shocking, 31% voted “no” because they thought it would ban in vitro fertilization, a direct lie from the Planned Parenthood camp.
28% of voters polled voted "no" because they believed the Planned Parenthood lie that women would be denied treatment for ectopic pregnancy.
“My family and I invested years of work into this amendment, only to have the largest abortion provider in the country invade Mississippi with their anti-family rhetoric,” continued Riley. “Knowing that Mississippi voted ‘no’ because of lies from our opponents makes me more determined than ever to try again, defending the rights of all Mississippians.”
Only 24 people out of 10,000 polled voted “no” because there were no exceptions for rape and incest, indicating that most voters understand that the human being in the womb is a person, no matter the circumstances of their conception.
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