The Vote Is In.... The child in the womb is not a person...

The vote is in and, at least in Mississippi, the child in the womb is not a person. In one of the biggest surprises of the night was Mississippi’s rejection of a far-reaching and stringent anti-abortion initiative known as the “personhood” amendment, which had inspired a ferocious national debate.Initiative 26 would have amended the state Constitution to define life “to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.”

Supporters, including evangelical Christians, said it would have stopped the murder of innocent life and sent a clarion moral call to the world. They said they expected that passage in Mississippi would have built support for similar laws in other states.

Opponents, led by Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, said the proposal would have outlawed all abortions, including in cases of rape and incest and when the mother’s life was in danger; would have barred morning-after pills and certain contraception such as IUD’s; and could have limited in vitro fertility procedures.

It appears that personhood will not be granted by vote... although some would disagree, I am not sure this is a bad thing.  For, if by vote we can call someone a person, then by vote we can take away that identity.  I, for one, am not willing to let personhood be determined by ballot.  Morality is far too precious to be voted in only to be voted out.  We already saw the debacle of the Supreme Court voting by narrow decision to decide a child in the womb is not a person with rights.  We would not gain anything in this battle for life by giving a momentary majority the right to decide it for a state or a nation.

We cannot define personhood or bestow it or take it away.  All we can do is recognize it.  God is the Creator and Definer of life.  It is just as much the fancy of our imagination that we can decide He is wrong as much as we can decide He is right.  The truth of the pro-life position is not that we vote personhood on the not yet born but that we can only recognize and protect what God has given and calls human flesh and blood.

I am sad on one hand that so many in a very conservative moral values state could not agree but I am not sad that the vote to grant personhood did not set a precedent.  We must win not by ballot but by the righteousness of the cause, by the high esteem of life, and by the conviction that we can only recognize this life and protect it, from conception until death (that is, death unhastened by human intervention).