The director of Personhood USA writes in USA Today this morning that Mississippi voters should back his group’s far-reaching “personhood” law in order to put the brakes on big government and decries the fact that “the American people are being treated paternalistically by a government, media and public sector elite that stands in direct opposition to our traditional American values.” That’s right, the personhood law which would criminalize abortion, common forms of birth control, stem-cell research, in-vitro fertilization and the treatment of ectopic pregnancies, says Gualberto Garcia Jones, is actually a way to curtail the size of government because it seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade:
Increasingly, the American people are being treated paternalistically by a government, media and public sector elite that stands in direct opposition to our traditional American values. Using the courts as its instrument, this American elite has emasculated a once independent America.
The Constitution, a document written to prevent tyranny, has, as Thomas Jefferson predicted, become “a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist, and shape into any form they please.”
No greater example exists of this abuse of raw judicial power than Roe v. Wade, a decision by seven unelected men to impose abortion on all 50 states.
…
This simple amendment has become ground zero in the fight over abortion because it challenges not only the legal foundation of Roe v. Wade— that the child in the womb is a non-person — but also the source of the power that has allowed the liberal elite to reshape America in its own image.
Les Riley, the extremist head of Personhood Mississippi, told OneNewsNow today that he hoped Mississippi’s personhood referendum, Initiative 26, would help lead people to convert to Christianity. Riley was previously a blogger for the Christian secessionist group Christian Exodus and is the Chairman of the far-right Mississippi Constitution Party, which seeks to “restore” government to its “Biblical presuppositions.” In the interview with OneNewsNow, the media arm of the American Family Association which backs Initiative 26, Riley said supporters should “pray not only for victory in the election, but that many people who are outside of Christ would be brought to him by our efforts — even those opposing the amendment”:
Proposition 26, otherwise known as a personhood amendment, declares that a person is a human at the moment of fertilization. And as the vote approaches, Les Riley, the director of Personhood Mississippi who launched the Yes on 26 drive, is encouraging supporters to utilize a major weapon: prayer. He asks believers to request that God would glorify himself and work in a way that is far beyond “what we’ve even got the sense to ask for.”
“We would just ask that God would work in a way that would astonish the whole world and that it would be clear that he was the one working and not us,” Riley says. “And maybe, perhaps specifically pray not only for victory in the election, but that many people who are outside of Christ would be brought to him by our efforts — even those opposing the amendment.”
The pro-lifer goes on to note the significance of the amendment.
“You know this will be the first time in history that a state has recognized the humanity of the unborn and their God-given right to life,” he points out. “It would make abortion illegal within our borders and would also challenge notions about abortion.”
Since such a challenge would apply both nationally and internationally, he concludes that tomorrow vote is “hugely important.”
