And We're The Most Advanced Country In The World

The North Dakota House passed House Measure 1572 which says in part:

The state shall naturalize all preborn persons and shall afford to them all the privileges and immunities of state citizenship guaranteed in section 21 of article I of the Constitution of North Dakota, except that the state is not required to include preborn children in state and local censuses.

The state shall afford the equality and inherent rights guaranteed to individuals in section 1 of article I of the Constitution of North Dakota and the right to due process guaranteed to persons in section 12 of article I of the Constitution of North Dakota to all human beings, including the preborn, partially born, born alive, and born alive who reenter the womb.

Personhood may not be denied:
a. If all the body parts are pulled out of the uterus except the legs or arms or portions of legs or arms are still inside the uterus;
b. When the child is about to be born;
c. When the child's head is taken out and placed back inside the uterus;
d. If a child's head is pushed back inside the uterus;
e. To partially born or born alive babies; or
f. Once a uterus is placed back inside the mother.

Rep. Dan Ruby, the bill's sponsor, says the bill would not necessarily ban abortion. But over at Personhood North Dakota we have:

The Personhood of Children Act is the only legislation this year that will stop abortion dead in its tracks.

That sounds like a reasonable interpretation when you read the text of the bill. The legislative findings are quite bizarre. We have findings like:

The right to life is the paramount right of a person. The right to life is a more fundamental right of a preborn child than the mother's right to liberty or pursuit of happiness, which does not include the right to kill other people. In no way does a child's right to life interfere with a mother's right to life.

Because scientists have discovered a way of creating pluripotent cells using umbilical stem cells, there is no need to kill children to obtain their embryonic stem cells.

It is not yet possible to conclusively determine whether all chemical contraception is abortifacient or not.

Because all preborn children are persons, no abortion performed with specific intent is legal. A direct abortion is always performed with the specific intent to bring death to a preborn child; it is a deprivation of the right to life and the right to the equal protection of the law and is the ultimate manifestation of the involuntary servitude of one human being to another.

It gets even better in Section 3 of the bill:

A person is guilty of an offense if that person intentionally dismembers the body of another human being, as defined in section 1 of this Act, without causing the death of the other human being.

So presumably the medical provider is not guilty under this law as long as the fetus is dismembered and the mother dies as a result of the procedure. The provider would also not be guilty under this law if the fetus is not dismembered. But that's not all.

A person is guilty of an offense if that person intentionally inflicts excruciating pain on another human being, as defined in section 1 of this Act, without causing the death of the other human being.

I'm all for reducing abortions to nil, but not by making it illegal which essentially has no effect on reduction. Education and contraception can do so much more.

I think it appropriate for North Dakota to have a corresponding bill called the Sperm Transmission and Unborn Protection In Discharge Act. The STUPID Act would make it a criminal offense for any male to discharge sperm for any purpose other than impregnating a female thus saving millions of potential children that would otherwise die a lingering and painful death.

"Yes," they could proclaim, "We hold the power in our hands."