Article Contributed on: 2/27/2008 7:03:15 PM
As if Colorado needed more things to embarrassed about, some religious zealot wants to impose their morality on us, again. From state sanctioned bigotry towards gays or force women to watch propaganda before having an abortion, now they want to legislate person-hood to embryos. Unable to thwart the Constitution's guarantee to a right to privacy they think they can skirt around it with this latest idiotic attempt. It's peculiar that the same set of people tend to distrust government intrusion in their personal lives but when it's someone else's personal lives there's no problem. Like many of the Christian fundamentalist attempts to legislate their special brand of morality on the rest of us, they fail to see consequences that are obvious to everyone else. I have to mention also, that according to the Bible, God says that you don't have a soul until you draw breath.
If a would be mother has a miscarriage, will there be an investigation to determine whether or not this is a case of manslaughter or murder? If the would be mother is smoking or drinking while pregnant will they be charged with neglect or criminal indifference? How will the state monitor the impregnated? Will woman have to register their pregnancy to the state so they can be monitored to ensure the fetus/person is not harmed? If a woman is unaware that she is pregnant and has the misfortune of finding out by having a miscarriage and she doesn't notify the police is she covering up a crime? Will she be permitted to use the HOV lane while driving alone? Will the state do a damn thing to prevent the sperm donor from shirking his responsibilities? What will be the legal requirements for the sperm donor? Will he be obligated to stick around until the baby is born or better yet, after?
Will invitro fertilization become outlawed as well? Many of the potential babies are tossed in the trash. Not too mention it smacks a little of playing God using science to create life. Another hypocrisy the religious right is willing to overlook I'm sure. What if stem-cell research begins to lead to actual cures, will the patients who chose to accept treatment and live be considered baby killers? After all, it was potential babies that were sacrificed to find and make treatments for diseases we have none for now. And most importantly, do we really want government bureaucrats parsing these personal and ethical questions and deciding for us?
This latest absurd idea from the Focus on the Family crowd is nothing more than an attempt to skirt abortion laws. Turning the practice into a crime. Despite the conservative hacks we have on the Supreme Court currently, Roe V. Wade was rooted in Constitutional law. The government has no right to crawl inside a woman's womb. They have no right to your medical records, unless they have a warrant which seems more and more optional these days. This is another underhanded and dishonest tactic that is also un-Constitutional. Do we really want the government regulating pregnancies? Doesn't that diminish women, violating equal protections? God hates women who get abortions as much as he hates gays I suppose.
This insistence to defy the supreme document that protects all our "god" given rights, begs a bigger question. A citizen has to ask oneself, do they adhere to the Constitution or their religious dogma? If one chooses their religion, even if it contradicts the Constitution, and they ignore the secular document, like an employer who fires an employee based on their religious preference, does that make them a traitor to their country? That's not a stretch. Currently there are more and more groups of religious zealots out there convinced their interpretation of their religious texts must be crammed down the throats of others for their own good and they will use the power of government to do it. James Madison warned us about this kind of thing. That's why he wrote protections against it in the 1st Amendment of the Constitution.
I'll freely admit, I don't like religion. For many reasons but this is one of them. Opponents of abortion like to claim that people who recognize that a woman has a right to decide what to do with her own body, actually likes the procedure. Planned Parenthood is often referred to as an abortion mill, a money making enterprise that encourages abortion to raise revenue. That's truly sick and twisted, but what does one expect from someone who has so little respect for individual liberty they would insist the government consider a doctor a criminal. But this is what the religious right does. Trick us into believing we should capitulate to them for our own good. If we consider the fetus a person, we deny the mother rights guaranteed by the Constitution. We give the government more power over individuals. We go backwards. And I fear the electorate might just be stupid enough to think this is a good idea, well at least the conservative Republican part.