ASUM passes resolution favoring women’s rights
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Montana Kaimin: Some students were forced to share chairs at Wednesday’s ASUM meeting, so great was the opposition to a possible state ballot initiative that would legally define personhood as beginning at conception.
More than two dozen students representing Students for Choice, Planned Parenthood of Montana, the Women’s Resource Center, and College Democrats stood to show their support of an ASUM resolution opposing the initiative. None of the students present opposed the resolution, which ASUM passed later that night. “It’s really important we protect reproductive rights,” said Amanda Zimmel, a junior majoring in sociology. She attended the meeting to represent College Democrats. The constitutional initiative would change the definition of “person” in the state’s due process clause to include “every human being regardless of age, health, function, physical or mental dependency, or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.” Montana Planned Parenthood reports on their Web site that the initiative, submitted by Montana ProLife Coalition, could limit privacy rights and threaten access to emergency contraception, in-vitro fertilization, and birth control. The Montana ProLife Coalition Web site describes themselves as “a grassroots, Montana-based citizen’s group that will focus on mobilizing pro-life Montanans.” The organization could not be reached for comment.
ASUM senator Patrick Rhea and Students for Choice campus organizer Daniel Viehland co-wrote the resolution not only to address the possible negative implications of granting fertilized eggs constitutional rights but also because the initiative includes no clause considering the health of the mother. “Women could possibly be investigated for miscarrying,” Zimmel said. “It’s ridiculous.”
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