So in North Dakota, as I mentioned in passing a few hours ago, the legislature has decided to define eggs as people.
North Dakota lawmakers voted on Friday afternoon to pass a “personhood” abortion ban, which would endow fertilized eggs with all the rights of U.S. citizens and effectively outlaw abortion. The measure, which passed the Senate last month, passed the House by a 57-35 vote and now heads to a ballot vote, likely in the next November election.
The fertilized eggs have all the rights of US citizens with the result that their mothers don’t. All rights for the egg, no rights for the woman the egg is in. The egg is everything the woman is nothing. Some twelve or thirteen years down the line, that egg herself might get pregnant, and goodbye her rights – she’ll be nostalgic for the time when she was just a fertilized egg and had all the rights of a citizen.
A personhood ban could have far-reaching consequences even beyond abortion care, since it will charge doctors who damage embryos with criminal negligence. Doctors in the state say it will also prevent them from performing in vitro fertilization, and some medical professionals have vowed to leave the state if it is signed into law.
Fewer but better North Dakotans.
Lawmakers endorsed a fourth anti-abortion bill last week that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the disputed premise that fetuses feel pain at that point. The governor stopped short of saying he would sign it, but said: “I’ve already signed three bills. Draw your own conclusion.”
The signed measures, which take effect Aug. 1, are fueled in part by an attempt to close the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo — the state’s only abortion clinic.
Or they could just send all pregnant women to prison.