'Personhood' bill defeated in North Dakota Senate

[Ilsa]

Source: Yahoo News -- Associated Press

BISMARCK, N.D. – North Dakota's Senate has rejected legislation to bestow human rights on fertilized human eggs, whether they be in the womb or in a laboratory.

Senators voted 29-16 Friday to reject legislation that sought to define as a human being "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens." The "personhood" status would include a developing embryo from the moment of conception, whether inside or outside the womb.

snip

Sen. Curtis Olafson, a Republican, spoke out frequently against the bill, saying it would make it difficult for doctors to treat problem pregnancies that could threaten the woman's life because both she and her unborn child would have equal status under the law.

At a Senate hearing on the legislation, two reproductive endocrinologists testified that the bill would complicate the practice of in vitro fertilization, which involves removing eggs from a woman's body, fertilizing them in a laboratory, and implanting a fertilized egg inside the womb.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090404/ap_on_re_us/abortion_restrictions

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Finally, some common sense prevails.

[JerseygirlCT]

1. Good to hear there's still some sense nt

[pleah]

2. K&R

[LynnTheDem]

3. Thank fucking gawd. This embarrassingly stupid shit has to stop.

The world thinks us deep-shit stupid backwards idiots enough already.

The American Talibornagains need to go move to Iran or Saudi and leave the rest of us in the 21st century.

[biopowertoday]

4. The Red River is giving them enough problems without dealing

with all the this crap. Congratulations to North Dakota.

[fasttense]

5. That has to be the stupidest legislation ever proposed.

I can see it now. First fertilized eggs are considered human, then non-fertilized eggs, and then the holy grail - Sperm is considered human.

Every sperm must have an egg to match, and so women again become nothing more than receptacles of the great trickle from a man's penis.

[DavidDvorkin]

6. Does this indicate that the fundie tide is retreating in N. Dakota?

And the state is returning to its moderate tradition?

[Odin2005]

8. North Dakotans have never really cared for social issues that much.

It's just a few vocal nitwits stirring this BS up.

Also, it depends on the part of North Dakota. The easternmost third of ND is very populistic on economic issues but tends to be socially conservative (I have a co-worker who fits the profile exactly), that part of the state, the Fargo area especially, went for Obama in 2008 (McCain was crushed here in Fargo), it's Ed Schultz country. The farther west from the Red River you get the more the tendency is for Libertarianism and the less it is socially-conservative populism.

The eastern Dakotas are an extension of western Minnesota, while the Western Dakotas are part of the western "right-wing libertarian" zone.

[ButterflyBlood]

10. North Dakota never had much of a fundie thing

Different type of conservatism than the south.

[DavidDvorkin]

12. It was my understanding that that had changed in recent years

That the fundies had been expanding their influence in the state.

[scytherius]

7. Next week they'll try and make masturbation and sperm killing a felony

What a bunch of dubs.

[ConcernedCanuk]

20. LOL - masturbation a felony

.
.
.

:rofl:

I'd a had my "three strikes" thing before I was 15!

still :rofl:

[Downwinder]

9. Damn, I just want an official "life begins at conception" statement

So I can get nine months back pay on my Social Security.

Those eggs might have been old enough to drive before they were hatched.

[Jefferson23]

14. LOL, good one!

[azul]

11. Incorporate fertilized eggs to get "personhood"?

Maybe if embryos can be incorporated as some business they can get legal "personhood", just like regular corporations have been found to possess by a demented supreme court. And this crazy concept that continues by a bloody-business-minded legal system that hasn't challenged this bullet to the heart of democracy.

Maybe I have goofed in saying this? These issues that divide peoples are made worse by the nuttiest of ideas hitting the legal system.

[yurbud]

13. Zygote, Inc. would never be vacuumed out--it would be bailed out

[surrealAmerican]

16. ... and their competitors: Blastula Corp. ...

... growing to meet your needs.

[IndianaGreen]

15. Don't forget the billions of spermatozoa entitled to personhood status

Men, do not spill your seed!

:puke:

[Mad_Dem_X]

17. Yes! Thank you, ND!

Wonderful that common sense has won in this case.

[LiberalFighter]

18. I'm wondering that if they did bestow human rights on human eggs

wouldn't that mean they couldn't remove those eggs from a woman's body because there is a possibility that the egg's life might be threaten?

[geckosfeet]

19. Damn. Another source of tax revenue down the tubes.

[sakabatou]

21. Personhood to eggs...

So anytime a woman had her period, she could possibly become a murderer.

:eyes: