OHIO Attempt at ‘personhood’ amendment falls short

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

An anti-abortion group fell short Tuesday in its attempt to gather enough signatures to ask voters this fall to change the state constitution to declare that life begins when a human egg is fertilized.

Backers of the proposed constitutional amendment in Ohio, a key state in the upcoming presidential election, and elsewhere hope to spark a legal challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which upheld a woman’s right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, usually at 22 to 24 weeks.

The group had collected only about 30,000 of the roughly 385,000 signatures required to be submitted to state officials on Wednesday for a chance to appear on November ballots, said Patrick Johnston, the director of Personhood Ohio.

The group pledged to continue seeking signatures ahead of 2013, but the shortfall was another setback for what has become known as the “personhood” movement.

“I did not get enough [signatures] in the mail today,” Johnston said Tuesday. “It’s going to take a little longer.”

Supporters fell short of the required number of signatures to qualify for the November ballots in Nevada and California.

And in Oklahoma, the state’s highest court halted an amendment effort there to grant personhood rights to human embryos, saying the measure was unconstitutional.

Voters have rejected similar proposals that made ballots in 2008 and 2010 in Colorado.

They also defeated the initiative last November in Mississippi, which has some of the nation’s toughest abortion regulations.

Organizers say a personhood amendment has a good chance to qualify for the fall ballot again in Colorado.

The state has a lower threshold of required signatures than Ohio; about 86,000 signatures are needed by early August.

The measures vary in some details, but in general they define human life as beginning with fertilization and are intended to ban virtually all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.