Saturday, September 27, 2008

Colorado's prop. 48: Who's a person?

Proposition 48 wants to define the term “person” to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as “person” relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of Law.

What are we coming to? Can we please consider a fertilized egg for a moment? It is a seed, home to unknowable potentialities. Do proponents understand that depending upon which data you believe, fifty to sixty-five percent of all pregnancies spontaneously (god initiated?) abort?
(http://www.choice101.com/17-conception-magic.html.)

Yes, those fertilized eggs are bundles of sacred life and a world of potentialities. They deserve to be treated as sacred entities. But, death, passing on is a part of life, especially during those months of gestation. The fertilized egg must achieve genuine viability before it deserves the mantle of “personhood.” It seems most unreasonable to demand that a “Potentiality” deserves the same legal standing as an existing human.

From a political agenda perspective - I’m constantly amazed by the bizarre right-wing ability to proclaim their conviction in: “The Right to Life” and “The Sanctity of Life”... for an unborn being, then in the same breath support inflicting a thousand “9/11’s” upon another distant, yet innocent, citizenry. Right-wingers will exclaim: but that’s self-defense! Why not ask: What about the troubled mother who must make an agonized decision based upon self-defense for herself and her existing family? How can the right-wing be so cruel to disregard the all around tragic ordeal abortion is for those involved? When will our right-wing brothers and sisters grant women their own right to self-defense, dignity, empathy?

For a most thoughtful consideration of the dilemma look up Rachel Richardson Smith’s essay: “Abortion, Right and Wrong”

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