An emerging issue epitomizes a phenomenon I have discussed in countless posts, and I hate to be a repetitive bore, so please bear with me....

I am hardly alone in noticing that like-minded, single-issue activists often associate with -- and tend to exclusively surround themselves with -- other like-minded, single-issue activists. The result is what many call an echo chamber -- or "the choir." But I think "echo chamber" and "choir" are less than accurate terms, because the implication is that people are simply getting together and agreeing with each other in groups. When group dynamics are factored into single issue fanaticism, a lot more happens than mere group agreement. Because people are naturally competitive, many activists want to prove to the group that they are not only devoted to the cause, but more devoted than the others. This leads to extreme hyperbole, and the taking of positions which normal people would consider laughable. A classic was a fierce theoretical libertarian debate I remember over whether handguns should be sold in school vending machines. Like-minded libertarians are no more immune to this phenomenon of ratcheting up the rhetoric than anyone else. However, I think that one of the remarkable aspects of the Tea Party (so far, at least) is that the focus on a common denominator of a few basic principles (namely Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets) -- without excluding any single issue activists -- has led to the integration by compartmentalization of most of single issue activists who are involved.

One of the largest single-issue factions in politics today consists of the anti-abortion people. I don't know whether they're supposed to be called "pro-life" or "right to life," these days, but I have no interest in living up to their definitions or passing their litmus tests, any more than I have an interest in the definitions or litmus tests of the pro-abortion (whether they're "pro-choice" or "anti-life") Planned Parenthood type people. As I have said countless times, I think abortion is morally wrong (the more human brain material the embryo has, the more wrong I think it is), but I do not think abortion is murder, and I have a serious problem with imprisoning women for it. Which I hasten to say again is hardly approval:

Saying that a woman shouldn't be imprisoned for aborting her fetus is not the same thing as approving of her act, much less saying it is a good thing. I think drugs should be legal, but that does not mean I approve of or advocate heroin. If God disapproved of heroin, does that mean it would be immoral to oppose imprisoning people for it?

I grew up in a time when abortion was illegal, but it was not murder. In my home state of Pennsylvania, if a woman wanted an abortion, she had to get a physician to say that it was for "therapeutic" reasons -- something many doctors and (or psychiatrists, in the case of a physically healthy woman) were willing to say. Only after the "therapeutic loophole" requirements were complied with (wink-wink) could the therapeutic abortion be performed. This meant that legal abortions were expensive and as a result they were more available to the educated, affluent classes than to the uneducated poor or working classes. Today, of course, there's no need to go doctor-shopping; it's abortion on demand.

In those days, abortion was the sort of thing that people didn't like to discuss, but (and this may reflect my background) I never heard anyone call it murder until after the divisive Roe v. Wade decision was handed down. The idea that abortion is murder is, IMO, a modern phenomenon which is largely a result of single-issue anti-abortion activists who would never have gotten together had it not been for Roe v. Wade. Few of these activists care about the consequences of actually changing the law to make abortion murder. Do we really want to have a country with millions and millions of mass murderesses walking the streets?

The idea that abortion is murder was also aided by Vatican rulings that life begins at conception. But what is conception? Some would say the moment of fertilization, but the history of the term suggests otherwise:

Both the 1828 and 1913 editions of Webster's Dictionary said that to "conceive" meant "to receive into the womb and ... begin the formation of the embryo."[10] It was only in 1875 that Oskar Hertwig discovered that fertilization includes the penetration of a spermatozoon into an ovum. Thus, the term "conception" was in use long before the details of fertilization were discovered. By 1966, a more precise meaning of the word "conception" could be found in common-use dictionaries: the formation of a viable zygote.[11]

In 1959, Dr. Bent Boving suggested that the word "conception" should be associated with the process of implantation instead of fertilization.[12] Some thought was given to possible societal consequences, as evidenced by Boving's statement that "the social advantage of being considered to prevent conception rather than to destroy an established pregnancy could depend on something so simple as a prudent habit of speech." In 1965, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) adopted Boving's definition: "conception is the implantation of a fertilized ovum."[13]

The 1965 ACOG definition was imprecise because, by the time it implants, the zygote is called a blastocyst,[14] so it was clarified in 1972 to "Conception is the implantation of the blastocyst."[15] Some dictionaries continue to use the definition of conception as the formation of a viable zygote.[16]

I think that saying that a fertilized human egg is a person is about as logical as saying an acorn is an oak tree, but here I am repeating myself. I don't think eggs have souls, and as I have pointed out, if they do then God is the biggest mass murderer of them all, because as many as half of all fertilized eggs never make it into the implanted and growing stage.

Regardless of what anyone thinks of abortion, it is a real stretch to declare eggs people, but once again, it is a perfectly predictable result of single-issue activists ratcheting up the rhetoric.

The latest idea is the so-called Personhood Amendment, which is being promoted in a number of states (including Michigan), and would amend state constitutions to have fertilized eggs legally declared to be people. True to form, the activists are ratcheting up the rhetoric, just in time for the election season:

Members of Personhood Colorado unveiled their first campaign advertisement at a news conference at the Capitol. The radio ad, which will be aired in the coming days, compares the rights of fetuses to American slaves.

It features a fictitious slave by the name of George Stevens who says he fought to end the practice of declaring people as property.

"I fought so all slaves would be recognized as persons, not property, and we won," says Stevens in the radio spot, as patriotic war music plays in the background. "But today in Colorado there are sill people called property Ń children Ń just like I was. And that America you thought you wouldn't recognize is all around you, and these children are being killed."

The ad asks voters this November to vote "yes" on Amendment 62 because the measure declares unborn children persons, not property.

"And that's the America I fought for," concludes the ad.

The news conference yesterday was attended by former Republican presidential hopeful Alan Keyes, as well as faith leaders who support the initiative.

The proposal would define the term "person" in the state constitution as being from the "beginning of the biological development of that human being."

While I am quite fascinated by the slavery analogy, for a couple of reasons I don't think it's quite accurate to phrase it only in terms of "property" versus "personhood." Even in the days of American slavery, while slaves were property, they were generally considered to be people nonetheless; an early DC statute is typical:

While each state would have its own, most of the ideas were shared throughout the slave states. In the codes for the District of Columbia, a slave is defined as "a human being, who is by law deprived of his or her liberty for life, and is the property of another."[61

So I don't think the personhood of a fetus is necessarily dispose of the slavery issue.

Slavery is covered by the 13th Amendment:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The point is that only people can be slaves, and in that sense human chattel slaves are not like animals, as animals by definition cannot be slaves. Except in the United States, humans are not allowed to be slaves. So, while defining a fertilized egg or a fetus as a person would give it 13th Amendment protection, how is it to be determined whether it is in a state of slavery? A fetus is not the sort of chattel property which can be sold as a "slave," any more than an unborn calf embryo could be sold as a cow, because what gives a slave value as chattel is that because it is a living, walking, talking, comprehending person, it can perform human-like work.

However, embryos and fetuses do share one feature in common with slaves in that they are trapped and not free to leave. Unlike slaves, though, they cannot be transferred from one woman to another (unless this could done before the implantation stage).

Sorry, but I just don't think the slavery analogy works. You could make a better case that an unwilling mother of the fetus is a slave, or at least in a temporary state of involuntary servitude. This argument has been debated by libertarians, and it gets complicated. I'm not sure how I would feel about the idea of having to carry to term a fetus implanted within me against my will. Suppose a burglar broke into my home and for some pathological reason left a baby behind. Sure, I would call the cops and have it taken away, but suppose the burglary happened when I was getting ready to drive to the airport for a two-week vacation, and if I took the necessary time to wait for the appropriate bureaucrats to come and ask all their ponderous questions, I would miss my flight. Of course, I would just have to miss my flight, but suppose I was callused enough to get in my car and drive away. Would I have any legal duty towards that unwanted human in my home? And because the baby is incapable of trespassing, it wouldn't make any difference whether it was left by a burglar or by some stranger who left it on the front porch.

Now, I realize that hypothetical is ridiculous, and that no normal person would leave an abandoned baby to die, but wouldn't it be at least as ridiculous to declare me under a duty to care for that child for a period of many months? Obviously, I am not free to kill an unwanted baby left in my house, but whether I should be forced to care for one is not the same issue. The state cannot compel me to be a child care worker against my will. Unless I were compensated for it, it would be involuntary servitude. Whether this means that women forced to carry unwanted babies to term should be paid, or by whom, I don't know; I use the example mainly to illustrate the endless hair-splitting that results from the "slavery" analogy.

But imagine the debates that will result if state constitutions are amended to call a fertilized egg a person. Taking ordinary birth control pills could be murder. If you think that sounds far-out, consider that there's a major debate going on in the pro-life movement over whether contraceptives should be considered abortifacient drugs. The fact that they might prevent implantation of fertilized eggs in the case of "breakthrough ovulation" is very troubling to some, but what fascinates me is that for pragmatic reasons, there's a sort of polite advocacy of keeping the issue in the closet, which has been bitterly opposed.

If birth control pills can in fact act as abortifacients (which I think it's fair to say they sometimes do), there have been hundreds of millions of murders committed by innumerable ordinary people -- many of whom vote.

Try as I might, I can't see the Personhood Amendment as helpful in any way to the Republicans or to the conservative cause. Were it to really get going, few things could be more divisive or more helpful to the left (and it might especially help the pro-choice movement.)

So under the circumstances, I must question the timing.