The so-called "personhood" movement promoting constitutional rights for fertilized eggs got a fresh shot in the arm in recent days with ballot initiatives gearing up in Florida and renewing efforts in Colorado and Montana. And a host of familiar nationally-known and emerging local activists from hard line anti-abortion groups are leading the new charge to ban abortion, contraception, and other comprehensive reproductive health care.

    Pat McEwen, a veteran of Operation Save America clinic blockades, is a co-sponsor of the ballot initiative under the aegis Personhood Florida. She now works with Life Coalition International led by Rev. Keith Tucci, a close associate of anti-choice zealot Randall Terry.

    Tucci is most notorious as Terry's hand-picked successor to lead Operation Rescue after his own inner-circle attempted to oust him. Under Tucci's command, the group staged a six week long intimidation campaign targeting Dr. George Tiller's clinic in Wichita, Kan., in the summer of 1991 that resulted in more than 1,700 arrests. In a 1993 letter to the group's supporters, Tucci reportedly wrote, "It is your God-given right to destroy [1] any man or woman calling themselves doctors who willingly slaughter innocent children."

    With Operation Rescue facing federal racketeering charges Tucci left in 1994 turning it over to another long-time Terry associate, Rev. Flip Benham, who renamed the group Operation Save America and expanded it to fight pornography, gay rights and Islam.

    When Tiller was assassinated on May 31 by Scott Roeder, an associate of Troy Newman's rival Wichita-based group Operation Rescue West, McEwen wrote a vicious press release for Operation Save America [2] blaming Tiller for his own death.

    McEwen has also been long associated with the Population Research Institute [3], a virulently anti-family planning organization that purports to debunk global overpopulation issues while smearing United Nations Family Planning (UNFPA) and U.S. Agency for International Aid (USAID) reproductive health programs.

    Despite McEwen's deep associations in the antiabortion movement, Personhood Florida has an uphill battle. The Tampa Tribune reports that the group will need to "collect 676,811 petition signatures by Feb. 1 [4] for its proposal to make the 2010 ballot."

    Prominent state politicians are already distancing themselves from the proposed state Constitutional amendment that would define a person as "from the beginning of the biological development of that human being."

    The group is expected to file the measure with the Florida Secretary of State following a Sept. 11 kick-off rally in Tallahassee.

    By all accounts, the Florida group appears to be mimicking its Colorado personhood forerunner last year — build a coalition from a tight-knit group of people who oppose comprehensive reproductive health care to lead the drive and count on the American Life League to bankroll the effort [5].

    And already those purse strings appear to be getting stretched quite thin.

    Personhood USA, the national coordinating campaign, claims it has launched 27 state initiatives, including a second try to radically change the Colorado Constitution. At the same time, the Statesman notes that the 2010 Colorado personhood ballot is aiming to run as an all-volunteer effort [6] — a curious and politically risky strategy considering how much money the national groups, like ALL, have proven they can raise.

    The latest Colorado attempt also includes the newly tweaked language avoiding the term "fertilized egg" for the more ambiguous "from the beginning of biological development" that was suggested to the foiled 2008 activists by Georgetown U. bioethicist Dianne Irving.

    After inexplicably kicking off the petition drive Aug. 25 at a non-descript Denver post office, the group has since fanned out at the heavily-trafficked Colorado State Fair and popular "Taste of Colorado" festival to begin collecting 76,000 valid petition signatures by the Feb. 15 deadline.

    While the two co-sponsors of the Colorado proposal, ALL's former legislative analyst Gualberto Garcia Jones and Colorado Right to Life activist Leslie Hanks [7]were previously profiled by RH Reality Check, the Montana proponents whose Constitutional ballot language was approved Sept. 3 have a much lower national profile.

    Kalispell physician Annie Bukacek, president of the Montana ProLife Coalition, will be going it alone with support from the Personhood USA mothership. The Great Falls Tribune reports that Montana Right to Life, Montana Catholic Conference and other anti-abortion groups oppose the statewide personhood strategy [8] as an overly broad and ineffective legal tactic for ending abortion.

    Like its Rocky Mountain neighbor Colorado, the Montana group will also not employ paid petition circulators to collect the approximately 40,000 voter signatures needed by July 2010 to qualify for the ballot. Its first all-volunteer effort in 2008 to change the state Constitution, fell nearly 50 percent short of its signature goal.

    But the first real test of the new-and-improved personhood movement will occur in Mississippi where activists are working to beat an Oct. 1 deadline to collect 90,000 petition signatures. How the campaign is progressing is anybody's guess.

    There's been a virtual news blackout of the group's efforts since late July when it was reported by state bloggers that Personhood Mississippi had just one-third of the total signatures needed. Even Jackson, Miss., evangelical activist and father of nine Les Riley, who's heading up the group, stopped writing about the petition drive on his own blog months ago. His more pressing interest now seems to be organizing and speaking at conservative Tea Party protests.

    In a wide ranging interview Colorado Personhood supporter and Christian talk show host Bob Enyart [9]— whose long-running feud with Focus on the Family's James Dobson for not being anti-abortion enough is the stuff of local legend — talked to Riley in April.

    Said Enyart to Riley, a one-time ultra-conservative Constitution Party candidate, "So many pro-lifers over a period of 30 years have been taught, by example National Right to Life. 'Don't mention God. Don't quote the Bible. We're going to win this on the laws of science.' But the problem with that, Les, is the laws of science don't use the terms right and wrong. By the laws of science, you can't prove that the Holocaust was wrong. So right and wrong come from God."

    Look for more state updates on the personhood movement in the coming weeks.

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    Links:

    [1] http://tw0.us/1M8

    [2] http://rightwingwatch.org/category/individuals/pat-mcewen

    [3] www.rhrealitycheck.org/right/population-research-institute

    [4] www2.tbo.com/content/2009/sep/10/would-proposed-amendment-make-birth-control-illega/news-breaking/

    [5] www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/08/17/eggasperson-crusade-drives-big-money-antichoice-groups

    [6] www.coloradostatesman.com/content/991251-early-proponents-personhood-go-postal

    [7] linked word

    [8] http://mtlowdown.blogspot.com/2009/07/anti-abortion-group-launches-new.html

    [9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Enyart

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