Pro-Life Groups Scrambling to Get Egg-Rights Amendments onto State Ballots

An anti-abortion group, Colorado for Equal Rights, is gathering signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the 2008 statewide ballot. The amendment, called the "Definition of a Person Act," would confer full legal rights upon fertilized human embryos. Other anti-abortion groups are simultaneously advancing similar measures in other states under different names. In Michigan it is called the "Personhood Amendment" and in Mississippi the "Ultimate Human Life Amendment." Abortion rights supporters warn that these amendments would lead to banning abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and a wide range of birth control methods that make a woman's womb environment hostile to egg fertilization, like intrauterine devices, oral contraceptives and the morning after pill. Despite their vast potential ramifications, these deceptively simple proposed amendments contain no mention of abortion, stem cell research, birth control or any other wording that indicates their ultimate intent.