CNSNews.com is reporting that Wasserman-Schultz made the comments last Thursday during a press conference, saying the passage of these amendments consitutes a "divisive, dangerous and destructive attack" on women.
“For the vast majority of Americans, including people on both sides of the abortion issue, this is an extreme and radical step,” she said.
“To American women, their reproductive health and choice is an intensely personal and private issue between themselves, their families, and their doctors.”
She went on to inject partisan politics into the discussion. “But Republicans in Washington and across the country have tried to limit these rights, with their assault on Planned Parenthood in Congress and restrictive laws in the states being among several examples.”
These efforts by the "far right" threaten to "cripple a woman’s right to choose, limit access to birth control, and put the lives of women with difficult pregnancies at risk,” she said.
The laws, which are popularly known as "personhood amendments," are currently being considered in Mississippi, Ohio, Texas, Kansas and Florida. They define when a human being becomes a "person" under the law.
For instance, the Mississippi amendment states that a person is "every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof."
Wasserman-Schultz was particular critical of this amendment, which will go before voters on November 8, because it will outlaw all abortions and some forms of birth control that act as abortifacients, such as IUD's, the morning after pill, and in vitro fertilization procedures that create and then destroy human embryos.
The Constitution's 14th Amendment provides equal protection of the law to all persons, which would include human embryos under Mississippi law if the amendment is approved.
Wasserman Schultz said that one of her main goals was to fight against a petition drive taking place in Florida that will put a similar personhood bill on the ballot in 2012. This amendment states: “The words ‘person’ and ‘natural person’ apply to all human beings, irrespective of age, race, health, function, condition of physical and/or mental dependency and/or disability, or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being."
Calling these proposed amendments "the most extreme assault on a woman's right to choose," she went on to warn Floridians about "just how extreme this personhood campaign is, what it would do to not only a woman’s right to choose but to saving the lives of women, to the opportunity for parents to be--the opportunity for men and women to become parents when they’ve not been able to.”
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