This Huffington Post article by Soraya Chemaly clearly explains the ‘personhood for zygotes’ movement in the United States. The three videos are well worth watching, and are a disturbing reminder about why personhood bills hurt all pregnant women, even those who want to continue their preganancy, and even those who are anti-abortion.
Thankfully NZ courts have ruled against expanding the concept of personhood to include zygotes, embryos and foetuses here, for now at least. It’s scary stuff happening in the US though, and we certainly can’t afford to become complacent.
And not just in the U.S. Here, too. In its current court case against the Abortion Supervisory Committee, Right to Life argued that s8 of NZ’s Bill of Rights Act (“Right not to be deprived of life: No one shall be deprived of life except on such grounds as are established by law and are consistent with the principles of fundamental justice.”) “properly applied protects human life in all its developmental stages.” That is, from conception. Luckily for NZ women, RTL definitively lost that part of its case when the Supreme Court declined to consider it. But other parts of the case continue.