Mark Hohmeister: 'Personhood' takes debate to dangerous extremes

January 23, 2010, Tallahassee Democrat

There's a move to amend Florida's Constitution, adding this sentence: "The words 'person' and 'natural person' apply to all human beings, irrespective of age, race, health, function, condition of physical and/or mental dependency and/or disability, or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being."

It's called the Personhood Amendment for short, and you can boil down its 42 words to this: "After conception, it's sacred."
Supporters of the amendment hope to collect enough signatures to put this amendment on the ballot in the 2012 general election. Some opponents doubt they can make it onto the ballot. Regardless, one day after the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, I thought I'd share what such an amendment would have meant for some of the women you or I have known.

• - Is there anything as exciting to a young married couple planning a family as the news that the woman is pregnant? And could there be anything as shattering as finding out that the baby has severe genetic problems and won't survive?

It could be Trisomy 13 or Trisomy 18 (go look them up yourself, and be sure to check out the pictures). Or it might be triploidy (69 chromosomes, instead of the 46 you and I have). The couple hold hands as the ultrasound is explained: It shows the heart and spine outside the body. The circulatory system apparently runs in reverse. The head is tiny.

Their baby won't survive to term, but guess what; it's a human being "irrespective of … function." So the doctor has no choice but to send this young woman home while the doomed child continues to develop inside her, reminding her every hour of the tragedy and putting her own health in greater danger every day as she waits for it to "die." Only then can the doctors remove it, and only then can the woman and her husband begin to heal.

• - The 12-year-old girl has been abused by her father. It's a terrible secret she has kept, but it won't be a secret for long. Now she is pregnant. The abuse was bad enough. Now she must endure stares at school and at the mall as her belly grows, and with friends and family she must choose whether to explain her obvious state as teen sex or incest. Her schooling probably will be put on hold. And in the end, she will be a 12-year-old with a baby — the child of a child.

• - A college student is raped. After the violence ends, she does what she is supposed to do and seeks help. At the hospital, evidence is gathered from her body. A counselor offers comfort. But what she might not be able to seek is a Plan B pill that simply prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg. After all, it is by law a human "from the beginning" and "irrespective … of method of reproduction." Try to imagine the year she faces, struggling with emotional scars and her studies while wresting with the knowledge that, at the end of nine months, she will deliver a child built from her own DNA, handed down to her over the generations — and the DNA of a rapist.

• - A married woman is pregnant. Sort of. Her doctor has diagnosed an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus is developing outside her uterus. Her doctor has the ability to end this quickly, with drugs or surgery. But wait. That expanding mass of cells inside her has full legal rights, "from the beginning of the biological development of that human being." There will be no live birth here, but she'll just have to wait for severe pain and bleeding to indicate that her Fallopian tube has ruptured. With modern medical treatment, she'll most likely live. But there's a fair chance that she will be sterile and that her days of bearing children are over.

This has always been the Achilles' heel of the anti-abortion movement. Politicians, who know how to count votes, will talk about exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother.

But if a mother needed a liver transplant, would she be able to steal the liver of her 16-year-old daughter? Of course not. Not in any state.
So here's what that politician is really admitting when he is willing to sacrifice a fetus for the health of the mother: The fetus is not the equivalent of what we acknowledge to be a human being.

This personhood amendment cuts out that moderating influence — the politician — and cuts to the heart of the abortion battle.
If a fetus, every fetus, really is a natural person with full rights, then I feel very sorry for the four women whose stories I told above.
And if it's not? Well, then we can have a lively little debate, can't we.

- Mark Hohmeister, Associate Editor