One wonders.

Here's the "Personhood Pledge":

PERSONHOOD REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE PLEDGE

I __________________ proclaim that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God, and is endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to life.

I stand with President Ronald Reagan in supporting “the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death,” and with the Republican Party platform in affirming that I “support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and endorse legislation to make clear that the 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn children.”

I believe that in order to properly protect the right to life of the vulnerable among us, every human being at every stage of development must be recognized as a person possessing the right to life in federal and state laws without exception and without compromise. I recognize that in cases where a mother’s life is at risk, every effort should be made to save the baby’s life as well; leaving the death of an innocent child as an unintended tragedy rather than an intentional killing.

I oppose assisted suicide, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and procedures that intentionally destroy developing human beings.

I pledge to the American people that I will defend all innocent human life. Abortion and the intentional killing of an innocent human being are always wrong and should be prohibited.

If elected President, I will work to advance state and federal laws and amendments that recognize the unalienable right to life of all human beings as persons at every stage of development, and to the best of my knowledge, I will only appoint federal judges and relevant officials who will uphold and enforce state and federal laws recognizing that all human beings at every stage of development are persons with the unalienable right to life.

Sounds simple, right?  This is, at its core, an anti-abortion or "life" pledge.

Or is it?

Let's dig into this.

I oppose assisted suicide, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and procedures that intentionally destroy developing human beings.

Who owns your person?  We're not talking here about killing other people, but the right to decide you no longer wish to exist. 

It is often claimed that suicide is an irrational act.  Perhaps some, even most of the time it is.  But certainly this is not always the case.  A person with a painful and terminal illness, say certain forms of cancer, has no medically-reasonable hope of survival and has only three choices: 1) Massive intervention that will lead to insane amounts of suffering and end in failure and death, 2) Massive amounts of pain-killing medication that will lead to silent suffering and infantile regression, ending in failure and death, and 3) A choice to shortcut the second path and go directly to the death portion, in peace and without the pain.

Who's decision is this?  It is utterly indefensible and amounts to torture to force someone to take path #1 or #2 when they choose #3.  Yet this is exactly what the signatories of this "pledge" have declared as their intent.

Second, let's talk about the general principle here.  The founders placed the vesting of rights at birth.  Certainly, they were well-aware that a fetus was alive; "quickening" was recognized even in ancient times and was not unknown to the people of the day.  There has always been a distinction drawn between miscarriage and stillbirth, for example, and justly so.

But let's presume for a minute that the law is changed to set the vesting of personhood at conception -- that is, the union of sperm and egg, and that we recognize as a matter of law the Constitutional Rights that attach to a person at that instant in time.

What changes?  More to the point: Is this really about abortion?

No.

All of the following would become felonies under such a system:

• Smoking while fertile.  Consumption of tobacco is a known assault upon your system and is also a known risk for low birth weight, premature birth and fetal harm.  Carbon monoxide, which is contained in cigarette smoke, is a documented poison.  Any woman who smokes and conceives while using tobacco could be (and in fact under this rubric must be) charged with felonious assault (the intentional delivery of a poison to a person.)  As such no fertile woman can smoke a cigarette, or she will face arrest.
  
  
• Drinking alcohol while fertile.  This too is a known risk factor.  An adult has a right to assault their own body with ethanol.  You'll go to jail for serving booze to a baby in its bottle, yet that's exactly what you're doing as a woman if you drink while pregnant.  Note that the standard here is not post-knowledge of pregnancy, since the fetus at the moment of conception has the right not to be assaulted.  As such if you're a fertile woman you cannot drink.  At all.
  
  
• Consumption of any pharmaceutical (or recreational) drug if you are fertile or pregnant.  Again, such a use would be the unlawful use of a prescription drug by a person other than to whom it was prescribed!  It is illegal to furnish a prescription drug to someone other than the prescribed individual and it is unlawful to "deliver" a prohibited drug to another person, with said "delivery" (without compensation) often of a more-serious charge than personal recreational use.  Note that this would also bar your physician from prescribing you a drug where the safety and efficacy is unknown or unproved in a fetus even if he knows you're pregnant.  There are myriad decisions of this type that are made every day in America -- and all of them would be felonies under this rubric.
  
  
• The Birth Control Pill would be rendered felonious.  The pill works by two mechanisms -- it stops ovulation and prevents sperm from entering the uterus in the primary mode, but as a backup it prevents implantation as it alters the hormonal balance necessary for implantation to take place.  Ah, that's a problem -- eggs do not implant in any event unless they're fertilized!  In other words the pill would be rendered illegal as one of its mechanisms of action is to destroy fertilized eggs by denying them the ability to implant.
  
  
• The IUD would be rendered felonious.  The IUD prevents implantation as well and in addition causes physiological changes (specifically, a foreign-body reaction in the uterus) that causes destruction both of the sperm and of any ovum that may be present.  In other words, in some cases it results in the death of fertilized eggs.  It would thus be prohibited.
  
  
• Any fertility treatment that involves the removal of eggs, fertilized or not, and subsequently results in the intentional destruction of fertilized eggs would be an act of homicide.  That is, any intervention that involves the extraction and treatment of eggs outside of the body would be prohibited, as it would be impossible to perform such a procedure without a very high risk of committing an act classified as homicide.

This is list is not exhaustive, but it ought to make people sit down and think.  The founders put forward the declaration of where rights vest ("all persons born or naturalized") under The Constitution not because they were ignorant Neanderthals (they certainly understood that a "quickened" fetus was alive!) but because there were serious and, for them, irresolvable conflicts between the various interests involved.

Nothing in this regard has changed over the intervening 225 years.  If anything technology has made the questions more complex, in that we can now do things that were unthinkable in the times of Washington, Madison and Hamilton.  We can intervene to save life that would otherwise perish, and we can intervene to make the creation of life possible where it formerly was not.  In addition, we have learned to block the transmission of life where it would otherwise occur, and with that knowledge has come the ability to destroy life.

The United States Supreme Court, in Roe .v. Wade, did not, as many people claim, decide that "all abortion is ok."  In point of fact The Court decided quite-narrowly -- that in the first three months, where separate and distinct existence apart from the mother is biologically impossible, the mother's privacy rights and the right to determination of her own body trump those of a fetus.  But the Court's same ruling sets forth that in the second and third trimesters the question does not resolve as cleanly, and that in point of fact in the third trimester, where separate and distinct survival becomes possible, the presumption is exactly in the opposite direction as it is in the first.

Since that decision partisans and religious zealots on both sides of the debate have tried to twist that decision and argue for points of view that are utterly unsupportable either in fact or law.  This is just the latest such attempt, and has been signed onto by Bachmann, Santorum, Gingrich, Perry and Paul.  Bachmann is out of the race but the other four are not.

All four have effectively declared war on women, stating that they know better than both themselves and their physicians, and that they are willing to impose a standard forbidding them from taking any action that might harm a potential embryo at any time during their fertile years.

Most people who have read this "pledge" think of it only in terms of abortion and wrap their arms and thought process around that singular issue.  As with so many things in politics, this is an error -- a critical error at that.

Abortion, life, and ownership of one's person is a serious and in fact "first principle" issue.  Reducing it to an intentionally-dishonest "pledge", without disclosing and debating exactly what the implications of such a position are, is the worst sort of attempted violation of individual liberties.

Ron Paul issued his "signing statement", but he refuses -- as with the rest -- to address the other issues such an amendment or position raises, specifically the impact on both fertility and birth control, both of which are legitimate medical elections.

Voters with conscience must reject this sort of political hacksterism and those candidates who engage in it, especially when the larger impact that would result is not on the claimed area of medical practice (abortion) but rather on routine family planning and fertility enhancement techniques.