NOW - NEW YORK STATE OPPOSE MEMO
So-called "Missing Angels Act"
A1731 (Calhoun) S637 (Larkin)
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March 24, 2009
NOW New York State strongly opposes A1731/S637 (Missing Angels Act).The ongoing effort of anti-choice activists to define fetuses as "persons" is at present rearing its head in the form of proposed legislation to require birth certificates for stillborn fetuses. Under the guise of providing comfort to women, this legislation fails to recognize that women are perfectly free to name their stillborns and/or to have services held in their honor. And whatever the purported reason for such legislation, the wording and the concept are inherently dangerous to women's autonomy. As was said by National NOW President Kim Gandy in The American Prospect - 7/16/07, "the anti-abortion crowd will look for some way to use this."
Already, under the anti-choice George W. Bush Administration, a 2004 "Unborn Victims of Violence Act" already gives fetuses rights apart from the women of whose bodies they are a part. Indeed the now-proposed state "Missing Angels Act" and its demand that legal status be bestowed to fetuses, poses a deliberate entree to governmental control of women's pregnancies.
As was remarked in a recent interview by NOW-NYS Marcia Pappas, "Where would the 'fetal rights' effort end? Most fertilized eggs are discarded naturally. At what point do eggs' rights equal or supersede the rights of the women who carry them? Granting "personhood" to embryos and fetuses before they are born raises their legal status and jeopardizes women's right to abortion. Indeed many anti-choice activists, although they profess otherwise, define most birth control as abortion. Their rationale is that because all effective contraceptive measures contain backup mechanisms to prevent the implantation of fertilized eggs, and since fertilized eggs are in their view "persons," it therefore follows that birth control is murder."
We of NOW-NYS are alarmed at New York's anti-choice minority's forays into this territory, so dangerous to the health and welfare of New York's women. And of course, state legislation is particularly worrisome in the present context, with the Supreme Court packed within an inch of overturning Roe v. Wade, thereby empowering states to seize control women's bodies.
In short, the introduction of "fetal rights" language into our legislative system is inherently hostile to the women whose rights are usurped by such definitions. We of NOW-NYS oppose the "Missing Angles Act" (A1731/S637) and support the strengthening, not the weakening, of laws protecting women's health.
Marcia A. Pappas
President
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