Due to grassroots organizing and education, the amendment went down to decisive defeat. Politicians take heed.
Mississippi voters yesterday soundly defeated Initiative 26, the so-called Personhood Amendment, by a margin of 58 percent to 42 percent. The vague proposition, which would have defined a fertilized egg as a person, threatened a multitude of untold consequences.
The defeat of Mississippi Initiative 26 and the gains for reproductive choice today in Mississippi–while critical–may in the long run be seen as pyrrhic victories given the ominous implications of Initiative 27, the exclusionary voter ID initiative that will disenfranchise thousands of African Americans, immigrants, married women, transgendered people, and Native Americans.
The polling has the Mississippi amendment to define fertilized eggs as people in a virtual tie.
Mississippi voters will be determining more than the direct rights of women in Mississippi when they vote on a personhood amendment on Tuesday. The vote will also measure how far the Christian right’s misogyny will go.
