Johnson writes: "My action to amend the so-called 'Personhood' bill ... represents the culmination of my and many other Oklahomans' frustration regarding the ridiculousness of our reproductive policy initiatives in Oklahoma. I have received overwhelmingly positive responses from men and women in Oklahoma - and worldwide."
Oklahoma state Sen. Constance Johnson, 08/17/11. (photo: AP)
About My 'Spilled Semen' Amendment to Oklahoma's Personhood Bill
10 February 12
s a woman and a 31-year veteran of the legislative process in Oklahoma, I am increasingly offended by state law trends that solely focus on the female's role in the reproductive process. With Oklahoma's new, never-before-experienced Republican majority, we are seeing enactment of more and more measures that adversely affect women and their rights to access safe medical procedures when making reproductive healthcare decisions.
My action to amend the so-called "Personhood" bill – SB 1433, introduced by Senator Brian Crain (Republican, Tulsa) – represents the culmination of my and many other Oklahomans' frustration regarding the ridiculousness of our reproductive policy initiatives in Oklahoma. I have received overwhelmingly positive responses from men and women in Oklahoma – and worldwide. The Personhood bill would potentially allow governmental intrusion into families' personal lives by policing what happens to a woman's eggs without any similar thought to what happens to a man's sperm.
My amendment seeks to draw attention to the absurdity, duplicity and lack of balance inherent in the policies of this state in regard to women. Oklahoma already incarcerates more women than any other place in the world. Under the latest provisions, a woman in Oklahoma may now face additional criminal charges and potential incarceration for biological functions that produce or, in some cases, destroy eggs or embryos, such as a miscarriage. In vitro fertilization, involving the fertilization outside the womb for implantation into the womb, would also potentially represent a violation of the proposed Personhood statute.
Finally, this amendment seeks to draw humorous attention to the hypocrisy and inconsistency of this proposal – from the Republican perspective of down-sized government and less government intrusion into people's private affairs. Despite the great challenges our state faces, it is far more important that we address issues such as affordable healthcare to help improve our state's ranking of 48th in health status; to create good, secure jobs that grow our economy; and ensure that all citizens have access to quality, affordable education.
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Comments
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Extremists of all sorts need to be seen as what they are -- crazy extremists. No one run a country for long on this sort of insanity, or even on faking it for political points. It's destroying us all.
The term Christian crazies didn't bother me one bit, but the term right-wing crazy Jews bothered me a lot. Not the fact that some Jews are crazy, but that they are right wing nuts.........
I believe all Religions are whacked, the Faith was built on Fear. Faith was used to keep Crowd Control. Bible, Koran whatever it is called as it is all the same book, was written by Man. Man is Fallible, Man is Selfish, Greedy, Hurtful,Inhuman e towards all Creatures.
I am afraid I would have just said all those of Faith Extremes are whack Jobs.
I'm not making this up, you know.
"right-wing Christian crazies"
Unquote
Please note: the correct spelling is "right-wing christian (sic) crazies". These wrongheaded, misbegotten zealots need to be differentiated from real Christians.
I have to smile when it might be considered arresting all those masterbating teenagers for killing babies. What a predicament!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/09/spilled-semen-amendment-oklahoma-personhood-bill
Basically: any deposit of semen not in a vagina shall be construed as an action against an unborn child.
Well if there ARE more rapes, it will be the woman's fault. She will have to be stoned to death for making the man rape her.
Basically: any deposit of semen not in a vagina shall be construed as an action against an unborn child.
This is just getting sicker and sicker by the minute! Sharia Law, here we come!
It is a rallying cry for a segment of the electorate that otherwise has no opinions or convictions on topics that admit of political solutions.
It is used by the right precisely because it can never be settled. All the right wing huffing and puffing about abortion has resulted in nothing but nuisance laws that get tossed by the courts and cost the taxpayers money.
1) Send women back to the home, where they won't compete with men for the jobs.
2) Replenish the white race. Those black and brown people are gaining on us.
3) Punishment for having non-marital sex. Sister, you're gonna hafta raise that brat for the next 18 years. Can't afford it? Go get a job!
Millions? How's that?
Poor cannot afford it. Middle Class accept their mistakes. Rich want their social climbing children to get the right spouse in the right family. We criticize other Countries but hypocritically we do the exact thing. Money makes for empty marriages. Hollow expressions like their own Zombie existence, feeding on others.
Keep the masses in control, use every device. Right now we are all accepting Gas Prices rising...why?
WE COULD SPECULATE ABOUT HOW MANY RICH PEOPLE JUST GET INTO THEIR CORPORATE JETS TO GET AN ABORTION IN EUROPE OR MEXICO. The 1% ALWAYS get what they want, whether it is an abortion or getting away with hiding income in places like the Cayman Islands. The "King" is always right and gets away with murder. They are "kings" and we are their peons. I have never seen it as bad as it now is (class disparity) in America.
If it's not abortion, they trot out homosexuality. And for an encore, the 3rd branch of gov't - TV - broadcasts a rerun of Lady Di's death for the umpteenth time.
I may have very well committed murder last night. Fortunately, I flushed the evidence. You don't suppose they're monitoring the sewage treatment plants for this yet do you?
Save the sperm!
Bet they don't read that part, though. Or if they do, someone tells them it means something completely different than it says.
I think it would be "just rewards" for all these people and provide positive proof to all their girlfriends and wives that they talk a good game of morality but will have a trail of child support payments that say otherwise.
They already stone us, chastise us, take our jobs away. Now their Chemical Plants, Gas Industry will take away the water and air that is left...Fools will be camping with Newt on that Colony. I wish they would leave now.
I wonder if their children end up sterile if they will punish them or themselves?
This is the horrible truth.
I believe they perhaps know that all their chemicals are going to sterilize them and they are scared...good. Far worse is those chemicals will cause miscarriages (they will never own up), but also children with brain problems, heart, respiratory if not immune failure, possibly even undeveloped organs.
This has been documented already when chemical plants move into slums. We will always have Cancer Clusters where developments are on landfills or near Chemicals, Oil, Burners. Also facts for century. Sooner or later these chemicals will strip their own children, grand childre if we last that long. Fools who just do not care.
NO ! potential yes! people no!
People have a moral obligation, sperm none.
That´s the difference.
"Two questions for starters:
1. Is religious freedom an individual thing or a group thing?
2. Does this freedom of religious practices and beliefs apply to new start-up religions and others religions' tenets like, say, Muslim?"
No responses to date.
Every sperm is great
If a sperm is wasted
God is quite irate!"
-Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Thank goodness for Monty Python's take on sexual hangups and repression.
Good for Constance Johnson. Monty Python's 'The Meaning of Life' should be sent to all state and federal legislators who think they have a right to mandate women's rights.
Either your argument is about science or religion. Which is it? If it's about science, then you MUST have an answer for that, in order to tell other people what to believe and what choices to make.
If one subscribes to faith in a god, then outcomes can be ascribed away to an all knowing or all powerful other. Our personal decisions form the basis for an external 'judgement'.
However if we assume we have been directed by our gods to judge on their behalf, we have a tendency to presume to punish as well. Therein lies a real problem, inasmuch as most of us confess our actual and continual imperfection through sins of both commission and omission.
That makes it a real paradox to try to develop a coherent, inclusive, democratically supportable compromise on public policy differences around biggies like "life" and "death". Opinions are rather varied and interpreters find all sorts of godly 'position statements' to support their conclusions. From The Jewish God of the Old Testament, Allah's enlightenment via the Koran as written down by Mohammed and Jesus, as remembered and/or anticipated by biblical authors and Papal prelates, we struggle with what we THINK we KNOW.
Separating church and state was a bold and impressive effort on our founders' part to avoid the argument. Community responsibility and support for the needy - whether impaired, of limited means, ill advised or subject to abuse - isn't likely to result in agreement anytime soon.
And that's the hypocritical problem with those who engage in debates and arguments about when 'personhood starts. What about the 'personhood' of the woman who is pregnant?
You and so many other male conservatives refuse to even recognize, let alone respect the right-to-person hood of the woman. She's nothing more than a vehicle for the fetus.
If you -- or other men carried the fetus, you can bet the male's rights would come first!!!!
2)the Republicans using this debate to stir up the culture wars again and change the subject to keep it focused on anything other than the economic, housing, mortgage, wall street and banking crises they created and the failure of all their policies.
Your first point is repeated ad hominen throughout this blog ("in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant" etc) but its a straw man argument. I don't see it anywhere. Maybe its true among conservative Christians in your country - it certainly isn't in ours. My observation is that it is driven out of a genuine conviction that human life is being snuffed out - nothing more, and nothing less. I will concede that the issues of how this effects the woman and the aftercare (birth onwards) are not often considered. If we're so determined about this we (Christians and others who struggle with abortion) must also be willing to take much more responsibilty for supporting the child (and its mother is she chooses to keep it) once it's born. (As a footnote, we have a chronic shortage of babies for adoption in our country for couples who are unable to conceive, so some of the pressure for this may be taken off. Not all, just some.)
Life begins when a fetus becomes viable and can survive outside the womb. Until then, any life outside the womb would be artificially supported, with an uncertain outcome.
Many who push for eggs and life unreasonably are very often those who object to artificial life support and against any sort of helpful insurance for those forced to to bring a very weak being into the world.
Idealism concerning the preciousness of babies should not be distorted into what amounts to life threatening positions of irrational exceptions.
Having high tech support systems means that the child is not capable of life on its own, meaning breathing, digestion, and so on. Having had a child of our own who was premature, I can testify to how difficult and expensive keeping her alive was. She actually suffered more than we did and the emotional memory stayed with her for years. He feet were even sensitive emotionally from having so much blood taken from then every day. Many premature babies don't live even after all the medical care, or have serious health issues later on.
We must all be sensitive, but not to the point of losing common sense when it comes to quality of life and who and how much a child suffers.
Oh, and surely you do not think a fetus does not require care, such as the diet of the mother, what the mother drinks, smokes, any activities of the mother that might jeopardize that fetus, not to mention the health of the mother when she gets pregnant. There is much that can damage an embryo or fetus. Including genes inherited.
Pregnancy is complicated and a bit dangerous for both child and mother.
At the risk of being intrusive, I'm assuming (hoping) that you don't regret the effort and expense you went to to give your daughter a chance at life:-)
I'm sorry I missed your most recent post here, until this morning. You are correct that the birth and life decisions are sensitive and all aspects should certainly be considered. I have only met one woman, a relative, who had multiple abortions due to total indifference to responsibility. Certainly, there are women who are the same, but nothing close the numbers conservatives would have you think. It is a big decision, but many times it is very necessary, due to health of the mother, age of the mother, and so much else. Seems most folks automatically assume the mother and embryo or fetus are without damage or health issues and therefore an abortion is usually a frivolous decision.
Women do have the right to make these hard decisions, though. The majority are not frivolous decisions. It is extremely troublesome that there is rather much a war on women, further dividing this country.
The latest attack?
"Every single Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. They did so because they want to throw out provisions in the bill protecting victims who are LGBT or undocumented, slash funding for enforcement, and entirely eliminate "the Justice Department office devoted to administering the law and coordinating the nation’s response to domestic violence and sexual assaults."
It's my only hope that they make themselves so extreme that even the fox guzzling people see how kooky it is.
But quite frankly it is none of their business what a women does with her body as well as the religious believes of those other than their minor children.
Because the majority of these so called pro-lifers are are war hawks in favor of attacking, invading & occupying nations to control their wealth.
If they really care about life & religion they would be supporters of the anti-war movement, protecting the lives of our innocent children who because of economic circumstances or brainwashing has joined the military. They would be protesting against the death of millions of innocent children, women & men in war & as so called collateral damage. Some those women killed in war were with child why are the pro-lifers not fighting to protect all human life?
If there is a choice on how my taxes are used contraception, abortion & women health or war I choose abortion & contraception. What about you?
Its time we take the control of our lives,money,nat ural resources & government out of the hands of rich white men and their wantabes. They are only interested in wealth, power & control of the people. The Dark Ages & feudal rule over serfs ended ~ 300 yrs ago, let's not let them bring it back.
It time to topple 1% and finally put the people in charge
Nobody seems to understand the governing principle here. It's so very, very basic that we tend to overlook it: IF The Church can exercise complete control over humans' most basic behavior - i.e., sexual conduct - then extending that control over our land, our wealth and our chattel is bound to follow.
The rule is: "Sex is a beautiful gift from God, but you are not allowed to partake of it unless you do so in accordance with Gods Laws - as interpreted by The Church."
My ex-wife had a similar rule.
I have often felt, as a retired attorney, that males simply do not have standing to legislate over women -
and, as the old saying goes, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament!
I applaud the amendment for its satirically bringing to light the absurdity of the base bill.
"Hey, if they really want to get serious, what about all the sperm that are wasted when the state executes a condemned man, and one of these pro-life guys who's watching cums in his pants, huh? Here's a guy standing over there with his jockey shorts full of little Vinnies and Debbies, and nobody's saying a word to the guy. Not every ejaculation deserves a name."
With this "personhood" idiocy taken to it's logical conclusion one can order chicken in a restaurant and be served an egg with no recompense.
Will both man and woman have to not swallow as Capitol Punishment?
What charges will be brought upon those who are sterile, man or woman? They must have been sinful for God to not allow them to conceive or have sperm.
Will those with slow swimmers be given shots or energizer so that none are wasted? or left behind? If we are going to sanction sperm as life form, we must make sure we have all the laws, amendments in order.
Will we need more salt in our diets to make sure the sperm have the right saline solutions?
Now the Politicians must remember that their children who say No to having sex are actually criminals at whatever age it is put to them. Which could make rape, sexual abuse fine. Child Molesters could now have a legal point to contest that the States are taking away their sperm's rights. Very big Kettle of Worms by Religious Humpers who do not think what path they could open up with a single signature.
Now who is going to hold up these laws? Eunuchs, but they would be illegal since they would have not specimens due to our cutting off the manufacturer. What about women who had their bodies mutilated, would they now have a better way to put their families and doctors on a chopping block. After all if they feel nothing how do they know if any sperm there when they clean up after.
Could there actually be Award Ceremonies for the best sperm, most hits, most congenial, MVP etc?
Will Vaginas and their surrounding areas be Awarded as the MVP
I am sorry I see some very bad things from this law. Sperm on their own are salty critters. Eggs are eggs. Neither are Human in their own state. I do not know if or when that union becomes a Human except that without incubation there is nothing. Even with incubation there can be Nothing. Just because someone has lost periods doesnot mean that a human is being developed. We only know that eggs need to be fertilized and that fertilization determines sex but the moment that a human is beginning to be formed is different in each situation.
Man says sperm cannot live x amount of hours, but that could be false information. I raise chickens, it amazes me that birds ever have chicks but the science works.
I am trying to be humorous but I know that we waste so much money on Laws that are against Mankind/Womanki nd. Laws that cost more than they are worth for the pain/trouble they cost. Yet the shining Law that can actually benefit Mankind/Womanki nd are few/far between.
I hope all of you in States that are engaging in more Satanism, Stop, pay attention not only to your Degradation of a Gender or both, but Doors that could be open.
Witches are Alive and Well. Satan is thriving...Nazi s are coming back
Any one who says that miscarriages are a form of abortion never had their dreams and plans for a new baby dashed by the loss of that child. It is an insult to many women who cannot carry a child. Some women even end up with mental problems because of it. Because she had been blamed for it.
Leave my religious beliefs to me and keep you nose out of my bedroom and crotch.
Being born as a female, here is my proposal: Man, as they can not concieve and carry pregnancy to term, nor can they give birth to the child (but they LOVE to participate in the sex act -be it act of love or act of violence) should have ABSOLUTELY no right to say anything about abortion. Women around the world should unify on this position. Because, after all, it is a woman, who perpetuates the life. Since IVF man can be only nameless, faceless sperm donor.
they who believe so strongly in taking care of the Fetus think nothing about killing people for their beliefs. I am not for or against abortion I AM FOR CHOICE and if my God is angry at me for that choice I believe I can handle it. Again Get out of My Body......
Well, my challenge is, "How does Andrew KNOW that personhood begins at conception?" And, "Because I'm religious and believe in God" doesn't qualify as a compelling argument.
AT THE MOMENT OF CONCEPTION there is just one single cell with all the DNA instructions to make a human being. However, all people have cells in their bodies that contain those same instructions and every one of those cells could become, with the proper care, a human being. It is called cloning, folks! So since every man and woman have such cells in their bodies, are these too persons? By whatever logic you use to define the single cell in a uterus as a human being, would you not also have to use that same reasoning to define these other cells as humans too? And if not, why not?
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