Abortion foes push state initiatives to bestow 'personhood'

[bliss_eternal]

Rights for embryos proposed: Abortion foes push state initiatives to bestow 'personhood'

By Judith Graham and Judy Peres | Tribune staff reporters
8:14 AM CST, December 3, 2007

DENVER - Opening a new front in their assault on abortion, activists in half a dozen states are preparing ballot referendums that would grant "personhood" and constitutional rights to embryos from the moment of conception.

The drive is under way in Colorado, where activists have begun gathering signatures for an initiative, and Georgia, where the legislature will take up the issue when it reconvenes in January. Abortion opponents in Montana, Oregon, Mississippi and Michigan are among those considering similar measures.

The new strategy takes an idea that has been central to the pro-life movement -- that human life begins when an egg is fertilized -- and makes it the centerpiece of state efforts to overturn women's legal right to an abortion. If the embryo is declared a person under a state's constitution, the reasoning goes, the termination of its existence must be considered murder.

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excerpted from:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-eggsdec03,1,3297674.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

...and so it begins. :eyes: