Ted Rall for November 11, 2011
Transcript:
Mississippians reject a ballot measure that says that life begins at the moment of conception. (Man: Woo-hoo! It's zygote-killin' time!) It's a new trend: voting about stuff no one can possibly know for sure either way. Nothing is true. Nothing is wrong. No one is right. No one is wrong. (Woman: People who die come back as babies. Latino babies.) (Man: Blasphemy! As town selectman, I will defend the rights of our reincarnated marsupial ancestors!) Anyway, it's not like the government was doing anything about the real issues- whatever those were. (We project "blue" as America's favorite color... wait... "lavender" is pulling ahead in rural counties.)
Anyway, it’s not really an “unknown.” Certainly a fertilized egg is living — as in, it certainly isn’t nonliving; it is alive in precisely the same way that any living cell in one’s body is alive, it is alive like a liver cell is alive. Is it a person is a different matter entirely, and there, the scientific evidence and reasoning is stacked well against that — it is hard to see how anything which doesn’t even have a nervous system can be a “person”.But it is an assertion of religious privilege, like Scully says; and a method to assert control over all aspects of sex, reproduction and women’s bodies.Where does this end? With women who have miscarriages, stillbirths and probably eventually spontaneous abortions being charged with murder:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges