Problems with Defining Personhood

Tim's out fetching Icees from Quality Dairy, leaving me to wonder how many caffeine pills are too many. Whatever. Happily, I called into work tomorrow morning leaving me with a little bit more elbow room to finish this god-awful, worthless paper that will do nothing to improve me or my abilities to practice social work. I'll still have to get up at an ungodly hour to move my truck to prevent earning a ticket by the university, but at least it means once I do that I can gratefully return to bed.

Oh sleep. How I desire you right now, you filthy animal.

Ashley has asked me to include current events on here, because she isn't the type to frequently keep up with the news. While I am a news junkie, on the other hand, and she tends to agree with me politically, she's happy to earn her news from me. I guess I'll do my best to deliver, even though just a few hours ago in the first post I  promised no political agendas. But whatever. This is my blog, after all. I am happy to participate in a good debate, even between friends. I find them both intellectually stimulating and enlightening and rarely suffer hard feelings afterwards. While I know not everyone walks away from a 'friendly' debate satisfied, I promise that I will not only respect any dissenting argument presented here, I will also consider its worth. I cannot say you will ever manage to persuade me to your side(although it isn't impossible, of course. I try to avoid stubbornness in light of rationality), but I am happy to entertain it. I wasn't debate team captain in high school for no reason!

I suppose one interesting piece from a current event that an alarmingly few people knew about (even pro-lifers that I know) was the Personhood Amendment that Mississippi entertained last month as a proposition. It  essentially stated that a fertilized embryo was considered a human being, and therefore, entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and happy happy joy joy and whatnot. The implications of this are many: several types of birth control would be banned (any abortifacient birth control pills, ie, pills capable of abortion), abortion would obviously be illegal, and (while this hardly received any debate or spotlight, much to my surprise) embryonic stem cell research would be against the law. I was happy to see that this attempt to  define personhood failed. Perhaps this comes as a surprise to you, considering my status as President of the Pro-Life group on campus, but actually, my reasoning makes perfect sense.

While many pro-lifers advocated the amendment, they failed to realize what possible disastrous effects could come out of its passing, namely, the fact that IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Why is this a big deal? If the Personhood Amendment had been passed by the Mississippi voting population, then it would have likely gone to the Supreme Court as it violated the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, which stated that states could not ban abortion within the first trimester. My fear is simply this: if the Personhood Amendment had passed, it would have gone to the Court, giving our Justices an opportunity to rethink abortion in the United States. It is unlikely that decision would be a pro-life one. Rather, the decision would have likely been one of a more pro-choice stance, perhaps broadening the state's responsibility when it comes to abortion, by allocating more tax dollars to funding abortion providers (such as Planned Parenthood) or even banning states from passing abortion restrictive laws.

While I am no longer sure about my position on the abortion stance spectrum, I will summarize it here. I am ideologically and morally against abortion. This is not a result of religious belief, but rather, of biological knowledge and my own sense of morals. Biologically, a fertilized embryo is a human being (I welcome your debate on this). I also believe abortion to be emotionally and physically harmful to women and emotionally harmful to men. Abortion has been tied to significant health problems, such as infertility, breast cancer, and depression. I think the ironic thing is that pro-choicers and pro-lifers both agree that abortion is not a positive act, but an act of destruction. The disagreement lies in the proper motivations and outcomes of an abortion. Personally, while I think that abortion is heinous and sad, I am hesitant to say it should be illegal. My point is, if there is no need for abortions, there wouldn't be any. Abortion is not an issue solved through legislative action, but a social issue that demands social change. Obviously, if a woman has to choose between her unborn child and herself to improve her life, that society has failed her.

This is also my problem with the Republican Party. While Republicans tend to be very pro-life, they are typically against social welfare programs. My issue with this is that, while they desire you to have all these babies, they're not particularly interested in helping you raise them. I think that's a problem.

Also, as far as embryonic stem cell research goes, I think it pales in comparison to induced pluripotent stem cell research. Everyone's so hell bent on embryonic stem cell research though, which drives me nuts, as the latter one I mentioned is not only less controversial but also more likely to be effective. I'll be sure to give you a lesson on that in a later blog though, as this one has obviously ran a bit long.