Personhood movements are gaining momentum in several states, posing a major threat to legal abortion this year.
President of Georgia Right to Life Dan Becker was featured at Cleveland Right to Life’s annual conference, where he spoke on Personhood. He received a standing ovation after his lecture and volunteers gathered over 1,400 signatures for the Ohio Personhood Amendment and gave away hundreds of petitions.
Historically, Personhood movements and large pro-life groups like Cleveland Right to Life have not always walked hand-in-hand. In the 2011 campaign for Mississippi’s Personhood Amendment, the Catholic bishops were divided, with only half of them supporting the Amendment. Ohio Right to Life has not supported the Ohio Personhood Amendment and National Right to Life leaders have opposed Personhood Amendments, preferring to spend their resources regulating abortion and electing Republicans to office. In the past year, however, there appears to be a growing tsunami of support for attempts to protect every unborn child statewide in state law.
Personhood received a huge endorsement from a former Personhood opponent in North Dakota, Christopher Dodson. He is the Executive Director and General Counsel for the North Dakota Catholic Conference, the public policy voice of the Catholic bishops of North Dakota. He used to train personhood-opposing attorneys on behalf of the Catholic bishops. But not anymore.
Now, he encourages support of North Dakota’s Personhood Amendment, which will be on the ballot this November: “It gives the people of North Dakota the opportunity to decide whether the state should recognize a legal right to life for North Dakotans. A state constitutional amendment respecting the right to life is not unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that states may enact their own laws and constitutional provision to protect human life, including unborn human life. Nor is a state constitutional amendment respecting the right to life made moot by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on abortion… Let’s affirm in our state constitution that which this Legislative assembly and the people of North Dakota consistently affirmed with its own laws – that every human being has a right to life that should be respected and protected to the greatest extent possible.”
Following Esq. Dodson’s lead, the Catholic bishops of North Dakota donated $100,000 to North Dakota’s Personhood campaign.
Dr. Patrick Johnston, the family physician who directs Personhood Ohio, states, “As the Catholic bishops of Ohio have discouraged signature-gathering in their churches on the basis of some of the bad arguments that the North Dakota bishops firmly reject, pray that the Ohio bishops will now be open to protecting every preborn Ohioan in state law this year.” He says that Personhood Ohio will continue to lobby pro-life groups to endorse their Personhood Amendment and help with signature-gathering. If their goal of 385,000 signatures is reached by July, the Ohio Personhood Amendment will be on the ballot in November and a simple majority vote could protect every preborn child statewide by January 1, 2015 – including children threatened by abortifacient drugs.
Certainly, if Ohio passed their Personhood Amendment, the battle would be far from over, but it would be refreshing to see opponents of abortion unify behind a two-sentence Amendment that, for once, simply expresses what they all believe: that human life begins at conception and every person should be protected by law.
(Source: Christian Newswire)
