Ed Quillen on the Slavery Argument

Ed Quillen commented on the analogy between zygotes and slaves drawn by "personhood" advocates toward the end of his recent Denver Post op-ed on Amendment 62:

If you ponder those possibilities and their ramifications, then it seems about four kinds of weird that the supporters of Amendment 62, an outfit called Personhood Colorado, bring up slavery in their marketing.

They've run a radio ad featuring a fictitious American slave, telling us that "I was held as property as a child. Even before my birth I was called a slave in an America you wouldn't recognize. But folks like you helped me escape North to freedom and in 1864, I joined the infantry to fight for my country. I fought so all slaves would be recognized as persons, not property. And we won . . . . This November, vote 'yes' on Amendment 62. Amendment 62 declares unborn children persons, not property. And that's the America I fought for."

But if Personhood Colorado gets its way, every woman of child-bearing age would have to be supervised lest she injure the rights of the person she may or may not be gestating. Every home miscarriage would have to be investigated by the coroner, for it's his legal duty to look into all deaths of persons that do not occur under medical supervision.

In other words, Colorado women would be required to be reproductive vessels, their lives limited and monitored, all in the guise of protecting "unborn persons." And that sounds a lot like slavery.

Indeed it does.