Thank You Mississippi

It's easy to joke about an embryo working at McDonalds or voting in the election for school board because at the heart of the Mississippi ballot measure was the absurd notion that a fertilized egg is a person.  And hopefully all get it that a fertilized egg is not a viable life.  Not in any species.  The fact that this measure even made it to an election, however, is terrifying.  Even more terrifying is the fact that people -- some but not enough people to pass it -- voted in favor of the measure.
Had it by some fluke of all that is sane passed, the death knoll for legalized abortion, for the right of a woman to choose what does or doesn't grow inside of her would have begun sounding.
I grew up in the era of coat hanger, back alley illegal abortions.  They weren't pretty and a lot of young women and older women died because of those procedures.
We can define life as beginning at any moment we choose.  That doesn't mean that our definition will be accurate or even sane.  It might mean, though, that we are driven my some self righteous sense or moral entitlement to decide that we should be able to control the right of a woman to choose.
Thank you, Mississippi, for refusing to take away that right at least for now.

This from the Washington Post --

Wednesday, November 9, 1:40 PM

Amendment 26, the anti-abortion “personhood’ measure on the ballot in Mississippi failed to win enough votes for adoption on Tuesday. As Aaron Blake reported:
A constitutional amendment that would have defined a fertilized egg as a person failed on the ballot in Mississippi on Tuesday, dealing the so-called “personhood” movement another blow.

The state votes on the "personhood" amendment, which would designate a fertilized egg as a person.

Mississippi would have become the first state to define a fertilized egg as a person, a measure which was aimed at outlawing abortion in the state but, opponents contended, would have led to all kinds of unintended consequences.