A bill to grant personhood to unborn Oklahomans tragically miscarried in the state’s House of Representatives this past Thursday. The legislation seemed perfectly viable in the State Senate two months ago, when it was passed 34 to 8, but the bill failed in caucus before it could become implanted on the House floor for a vote, and has been resorbed back into the body politic. Come to think of it, that’s just like the development of the vast majority of fertilized human eggs, which don’t lead to live birth.
The “personhood” bill would have granted full legal rights to biological byproducts of conventionally consummated adult heterosexual human love lodged in the female of the species, without regard to their independent viability or exceptions for health risks or rape or incest or forced space alien and demonic impregnation. Such a law would have criminalized forms of birth control and fertility treatment as well as some types of vigorous exercise, and would have denied healthcare choice to women in the name of granting “personhood” to their fertilized eggs and embryos. The Oklahoma legislature decided to table the vote and avoid the wrath of angry women voters and the medical profession, at least until they can offset it by granting the vote to the unborn and ensuring that zygotes and embryos vote Republican.
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Tags: embryos, Oklahoma, personhood, women, women's health, zygotes
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