It’s another week, and another opportunity for Alabamians to say “thank God for Mississippi.” If you aren’t from around these parts, the phrase is used to celebrate those instances when Alabama’s neighbor, Mississippi, places 50th in some list on which Alabama is 49th, like literacy or taxing the poor or political foolishness. For weeks Alabama has been in the spotlight thanks to its new immigration law, but this week all eyes are on Mississippi and an attempt to redefine “personhood” with Proposition 26.
Prop 26 would give legal personhood and separate legal rights to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses. As such, certain birth control measures like the IUD and the morning after pill would become illegal. The law would also create severe legal threats to women who may, for instance, miscarry at home or opt for vaginal deliveries after C-sections. Such has been the case in other states passing similar laws, discussed in this Hattiesburg American opinion piece.
The Catholic Church is against Prop 26 because it might interfere with the Church's attempt to overcome Roe vs. Wade. The Church, as well as all Americans, should be against the proposed law because in order to protect one group (which they must pass a law in order to define as such), American women must be once again become property, owned by the family members, doctors, and politicians who will exercise the legal right to determine what women do with their bodies.
As Allison Korn argues in the above linked commentary, “To oppose Proposition 26 is not to deny the value of potential life as a matter of religious belief, emotional conviction or personal experience. Rather, it is to recognize that rewriting the state constitution to include human beings from the moment of fertilization is to exclude women from the moment they become pregnant.”
I hope that after tomorrow’s vote on Prop 26, I will be able to say not “thank God for Mississippi,” but “thank you Mississippi” for not selling your women back into legal bondage.
Prop 26 would give legal personhood and separate legal rights to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses. As such, certain birth control measures like the IUD and the morning after pill would become illegal. The law would also create severe legal threats to women who may, for instance, miscarry at home or opt for vaginal deliveries after C-sections. Such has been the case in other states passing similar laws, discussed in this Hattiesburg American opinion piece.
The Catholic Church is against Prop 26 because it might interfere with the Church's attempt to overcome Roe vs. Wade. The Church, as well as all Americans, should be against the proposed law because in order to protect one group (which they must pass a law in order to define as such), American women must be once again become property, owned by the family members, doctors, and politicians who will exercise the legal right to determine what women do with their bodies.
As Allison Korn argues in the above linked commentary, “To oppose Proposition 26 is not to deny the value of potential life as a matter of religious belief, emotional conviction or personal experience. Rather, it is to recognize that rewriting the state constitution to include human beings from the moment of fertilization is to exclude women from the moment they become pregnant.”
I hope that after tomorrow’s vote on Prop 26, I will be able to say not “thank God for Mississippi,” but “thank you Mississippi” for not selling your women back into legal bondage.
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