North Dakota having some problems reading dictionaries ...

Another abominably stupid bill, this time from North Dakota, has just been thrown out the window by the Senate. Otherwise, zygotes – collections of cells no more important than tumors for Pete's sake – would have been legally identified as 'persons', because they contain the homo sapiens genome. This would be any self-serving pro-lifer's wet-dream of course, as it would permanently illegalize abortion as 'murder', according to most definitions.

The Senate voted 29-16 Friday to defeat the controversial House Bill 1572, known as the personhood bill, with no debate.

Sen. Curt Olafson, R-Edinburg, the only person who spoke on it, said the bill would create more serious legal consequences for the state than any bill he’s ever seen as a lawmaker.

...He said it “reaches far beyond protecting human rights” into unrelated consequence because it declares all fertilized embryos persons for the purposes of myriad laws that have nothing to do protecting human rights.

A physician “faces an impossible dilemma” if needing to treat a pregnant woman for cancer that could harm a fetus or embryo, or a woman experiencing an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy, he said.

You know the bill is atrociously idiotic when it takes a Republican to speak out on it.

It seems the creators of the bill are still amongst the ignorant, indoctrinated pro-life variety of stupid, so let's see if we can set the record straight, shall we?

A 'person' is any human being that is sentient – ie. able to feel and perceive and think subjectively. Feel emotions, think rational thoughts, and etc.

A human being, is any creature that both contains the human genome AND is developed enough to actually pass for a human. Not the case with a zygote, which looks like a random blob.

Merely containing the human genome does not make something human, and most certainly does not make it a person.

It's really quite unnerving that we allow totally incompetent and ignorant fools into office who are clueless about basic scientific and biological facts and concepts and who try to peddle through their idiotic beliefs upon the public who largely can't do a damn thing about it.