North Dakota House says any human fertilized egg is a person

North Dakota’s House of Representatives has passed a bill declaring that every fertilized egg has all the same rights of a baby.   If passed, this bill would mean that any abortion is the equivalent of murder.  Here’s some of the wording of the bill, from the Associated Press:

The bill declares that “any organism with the genome of homo sapiens” is a person protected by rights granted by the North Dakota Constitution and state laws.

It would seem that it would be impossible to pull the plug of comatose people, even if they are in an irrefutably permanent vegetative state.    Then, of course, there are the many well-trodden concerns that this kind of law is abhorrent for its effect on reproductive freedoms.

Share

Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Avatar of Dan Klarmann
    Dan Klarmann

    What is an organism? Is a blood cell an organism? Obviously not. Is a t-cell an organism? Nope.

    Is a blastocyst an organism? Not yet. It lacks most of the functions of an organism, like respiration and reproduction.

    So how can just a fertilized egg be "an organism"? It's a seed, like a wheat berry or an acorn. Give it the right environment for long enough, and it may grow into an organism.

  2. Avatar of Niklaus Pfirsig
    Niklaus Pfirsig

    From a newsblip accidentally transported through a freak time warp to my computer:

    April 1, 2031: The Supreme Court today ruled that masturbation is premeditated murder and therefore punishable by death. This is based on the 2017 ruling that life is continuous and the soul is transmitted from both parents.

    Under the new ruling, wet dreams could be considered involuntary man slaughter.

    In an unrelated ruling, the supreme court also decided to uphold the intellectual property patent held by Apple founder Steve Jobs for "a method of manually installing personal garments for the lower half of the body". The patent had been contested by Apple rival Microsoft who failed to show proof of prior art to support it's claim to exclusive licensing rights for the act off putting on one's pants one leg at a time.

    Just days after the Walmart's leveraged buyout of the Arkansas state government, Wal-mart CEO and Arkansas Governor Hillary Clinton has announced that Arkansas will be changing it's name to Clintonia in an effort to distance itself from the hillbilly image associated with the old comic strip "Li'l Abner" and as a tribute to the lat Bill Clinton who died last year from a popular social disease.

    1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
      Erich Vieth

      Another freak time warp news-post, this one from 2012: North Dakota, after some thought, declares God to be a mass murderer and issues a warrant for His arrest, given that 25% of all pregnancies spontaneously miscarry.

  3. Avatar of grumpypilgrim
    grumpypilgrim

    Seems to me they're trying to attack medicinal abortions (e.g., RU 486), which now account for a large percentage of abortions that happen in the U.S.

    Another step forward (?) in making a woman's pelvis part of the public domain….

  4. Avatar of Modusoperandi
    Modusoperandi

    All I can say is "Thank God". I mean, now they can finally crack down on abortifacients, like breastfeeding, caffeine, exercise and stress. Just for the chicks, of course. Men can breastfeed while drinking coffee, exercising and worrying about their jobs all they want.

Leave a Reply