Jay has written a very good and important--if highly disturbing--post at Left in the West. The good and important you should go read for yourself, but I can distill the disturbing quickly--the title of his post, "Would you entrust your vagina to this man?"
The man in question is Rick Jore, and I can tell you right now that I don't even like to think of Rick Jore being in the same state as my Lady Business. Especially now:
State Rep. Rick Jore of Ronan, a staunch abortion opponent, hopes to have Montana voters decide next year whether the state constitution should define “person” in such a way as to outlaw abortion.
Jore, the Legislature’s only Constitution Party member, is proposing a ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to define person as “a human being at all stages of human development or life, including the state of fertilization.”
That's right, Jore is going all Colorado on our ass, trying to award all those great Constitutional rights we used to have to fertilized eggs. It's not surprising in the least, coming from him, but still it grates.
Just as grating is the comment thread there, in which someone actually pulls out the old "Aren't you glad your mother didn't believe in abortion?" saw. Much like Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies, this argument should immediately signal that the commenter making the statement has lost and must go away to another website and peddle his (I think it's almost always his with that question) stunning logic.
As I think I've said before on this site, my mother and I and our uteruses (and more often than not my father and brother with their honorary uteruses) were frequent fixtures at pro-choice causes. I have never for one moment doubted where my parents stood on the choice issue, and yet they managed to give life to two children. In 1973 and 1981, no less, so abortion would have been an option. How in the heck did that work?
It worked because women don't run around getting abortions on whims. And it worked because my brother and I were both wanted and planned. I sometimes wonder if the most vocal of the anti-choicers worry deep down in their heart of hearts that maybe they exist only because their mothers were "pro-life". It's not a worry keeping me up at night, that's for sure.