'Personhood' bill defeated in North Dakota Senate

[Ilsa]

Source: Yahoo News -- Associated Press

BISMARCK, N.D. – North Dakota's Senate has rejected legislation to bestow human rights on fertilized human eggs, whether they be in the womb or in a laboratory.

Senators voted 29-16 Friday to reject legislation that sought to define as a human being "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens." The "personhood" status would include a developing embryo from the moment of conception, whether inside or outside the womb.

snip

Sen. Curtis Olafson, a Republican, spoke out frequently against the bill, saying it would make it difficult for doctors to treat problem pregnancies that could threaten the woman's life because both she and her unborn child would have equal status under the law.

At a Senate hearing on the legislation, two reproductive endocrinologists testified that the bill would complicate the practice of in vitro fertilization, which involves removing eggs from a woman's body, fertilizing them in a laboratory, and implanting a fertilized egg inside the womb.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090404/ap_on_re_us/abortio...

[RDANGELO]

1. Sanity prevails. n/t

[hobbit709]

2. And then, there's Georgia

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5389417

[Ilsa]

3. Damn, that's scary. nt

[azul]

4. Jeezz, I thought this was about business persons' legal rights.

Maybe if embryos can be incorporated as some business they can get legal "personhood", just like regular corporations have been found to possess by a demented supreme court. And this crazy concept that continues by a bloody-business-minded legal system that hasn't challenged this bullet to the heart of democracy. (We are about bled-out presently.)

Maybe I have goofed in saying this? These issues that divide peoples are made worse by the nuttiest of ideas hitting the legal system.