North Dakota Senate rejects zygote citizen bill

The ridiculous and dangerous "personhood" amendment bit the dust in the North Dakota Senate. Thank god this failed -- the ND House recently gave the thumbs up to declaring a fertilized egg a person, defining it as "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens."

The Senate voted 29-16 Friday to defeat the controversial House Bill 1572, known as the personhood bill, with no debate.

Sen. Curt Olafson, R-Edinburg, the only person who spoke on it, said the bill would create more serious legal consequences for the state than any bill he’s ever seen as a lawmaker.

...He said it “reaches far beyond protecting human rights” into unrelated consequence because it declares all fertilized embryos persons for the purposes of myriad laws that have nothing to do protecting human rights.

A physician “faces an impossible dilemma” if needing to treat a pregnant woman for cancer that could harm a fetus or embryo, or a woman experiencing an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy, he said.

No kidding. That little fact must not have been apparant to the womb controllers who support this bill -- North Dakota Right to Life, the North Dakota affiliate of Concerned Women for America and the North Dakota Catholic Conference. Well, it probably did but they didn't give a damn about consequences.

UPDATE: I received an email from Sen. Olafson, who said the above-mentioned organizations (the source was LifeNews) didn't endorse the bill:

Ms. Spaulding,

I carried House Bill 1572 on the Senate floor, and I am writing to correct some incorrect information contained in your comments on your website. You listed "North Dakota Right to Life, the North Dakota affiliate of Concerned Women for America and the North Dakota Catholic Conference" as being supporters of the bill. The fact is that all three of these entities did not support the bill. The ND Catholic Conference held a news conference and stated that they could not support the bill as written. NDRL and ND CWA did not lobby or testify in support or opposition...

Senator Curtis Olafson

District 10