Sense and Census in Mississippi

Next week in the state of Mississippi the electorate will vote on Proposition 26, which would confer personhood on a human fertilized egg. Les Riley, who has worked on getting the proposition on the ballot and passes, says that the purpose of the law is to “help stop abortion in our state.” The logic behind this antiabortion is pretty straightforward. If a fetus is, by law, a person, then aborting that fetus amounts to murder. There would be no abortions in Mississippi, as folks like Riley want.

            Now I don’t want to wade into the abortion debate here. For me, both sides can make convincing arguments and present examples that can sway my opinion. But if Mississippi passes Prop 26, besides jeopardizing some forms of birth control that keep fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus, they are opening up a big can of worms.

            After Prop 26 passes, how will Mississippi conduct a census? Traditionally a pregnant woman counts as one person. Once the woman gives birth, there are two persons. This is how it has been done throughout history. In the bible Joseph searches Bethlehem for a place to stay for him and Mary, a very pregnant Mary, but it is clear in the Gospel of Luke that there is just Mary and Joseph—two and only two persons. Mary gives birth, the angels sing, shepherds make their visit, and the Holy Family is now three. It is the process of birth that adds a person to the human total.

            As the law only requires that there be a fertilized egg within a woman’s body, with the passage of Prop 26 every female of childbearing age in Mississippi is possibly a plural of persons. Unless a woman is locked away in solitary confinement, there is no way to tell if she has a fertilized egg floating around inside her. She might be one person. She might be more than one person. How do you count that?

This is not that far fetched. Before the Civil War, Mississippi, as well as the rest of the slave holding states, wanted the best of all possible worlds: slave holders having power over their slaves as property and federal political power as an expression of their population. So they finagled with how much a person could be counted. The equation came out as a slave being equal to three fifths of a person. Silly? Well, the Founding Fathers signed off on it, so there must have been a great deal of wisdom in the equation. Maybe Jefferson did the arithmetic.

            So how is the Magnolia State to count its citizens? Women who know that they are pregnant would have to be counted more than once. Carrying twins? Triplets? These women would be counted multiple times. A pregnant Octomom would count as much as a baseball team. As many fertilized eggs don’t get implanted in uteri, a Mississippi female could be one person, then two, then one again without even knowing that she had been a plural for a few days. Traffic cops have no way of knowing if a driver has a fertilized egg inside her. Will Prop 26 open the door for women, without any other apparent passengers in their cars, to drive in carpool lanes?

            As I said before, I don’t want to get into the abortion debate. But when any person or political cause ventures into the absurd, you get absurd results.