The Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a state law that declared all fertilized eggs to be persons with full rights — and it did so by a unanimous 9-0 vote. The ruling was based on Planned Parenthood v Casey, the 1992 case in which Justices Souter and O’Connor convinced Justice Kennedy to uphold the primary holding of Roe v Wade.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Monday halted an effort to grant “personhood” rights to human embryos, saying the measure is unconstitutional.
The state’s highest court ruled unanimously that a proposed amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution that would define a fertilized human egg as a person violates a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a Pennsylvania case and “is clearly unconstitutional.” Supporters of the personhood amendment are trying to gather enough signatures to put it before Oklahoma voters on the November ballot.
The precedent here could hardly be more clear, but I’m still shocked that nine Oklahoma justices voted that way.
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Who Knows?
May 4, 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Who would have thought the Oklahoma Supreme Court had 9 liberal activist justices?
Reginald Selkirk
May 4, 2012 at 1:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Since they cited a federal precedent, this could be useful in other states as well.
Randomfactor
May 4, 2012 at 1:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
SCOTUS has changed since 1992. The fundies may be celebrating this as a road to overturning Roe.
I mean, the Supremes have been declaring personhood for all sorts of unlikely things lately.
HumanisticJones
May 4, 2012 at 1:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Quote the movie Independence Day…
“Get on the wire to every squadron around the world. Tell ‘em how to bring those sons of bitches down.”
baal
May 4, 2012 at 1:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll have to go read for the wining argument. I hope it was how insane the implications of implementation would be.
eric
May 4, 2012 at 1:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Head-exploding thought for the day….
Conservative personhood laws + conservative stand your ground laws = liberal abortion policy, as women argue they used lethal force in response to a reasonable belief of a threat from another person.
After all, the foetus is leaching calcium from their bones, nutrients from their blood, and even in the US the chance of dying in childbirth is something like 0.01%.
d cwilson
May 4, 2012 at 2:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m sure they see any case that has the potential of going before SCOTUS as a road to overturning Roe. This is why there has been such a flurry of anti-abortion laws coming out of state legislatures. The teabaggers (who were supposedly not interested in cultural war issues) saw the gains of 2010 as an opportunity to roll the dice.
That might actually work if someone invents a way to perform abortions with a gun.
robertfaber
May 4, 2012 at 2:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, many if not most fertilized eggs end up as a stain on a tampon in a landfill. Over half of pregnancies spontaneously abort. If there is a God, he sure doesn’t care much about those “persons”.
leni
May 4, 2012 at 3:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ Eric- I’ve thought that too. If it is a person that doesn’t mean it has the right to implant itself in my womb.
d cwilson: sorry to ruin your joke but guns aren’t the only means of self-defense ;)
Modusoperandi
May 4, 2012 at 4:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
baal “I hope it was how insane the implications of implementation would be.”
This sounds like a job for…Small Government!
Chris from Europe
May 4, 2012 at 7:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s a strange definition of lately.
Chiroptera
May 4, 2012 at 7:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What is interesting (to me) is that the Oklahoma court did not strike down a law granting personhood to fetuses. They ruled that the proposed amendment cannot even be put onto the ballot for the people’s consideration.
The Oklahoma Constitution evidently prohibits being amended in a way that contradicts the US Constitution. So, basically, the court said that inasmuch as prior precedent has unambiguously shown that women have a US Constitutional right to abortion, Oklahomans and their politicians have to find a different route if they want to set up a court challenge to overturn Roe v Wade.
Childermass
May 5, 2012 at 11:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I am not really surprised by the 9-0 vote. Only a non-professional could have voted otherwise. Now I imagine that at some of them disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court but know that the U.S. Supreme Court outranks any Oklahoma court.
If the inbreed hicks has any brains, the ballot measure would have been phrased in terms of if the Supreme Court reversed itself, then the measure would go into effect….