In
Chen v. Nevada Prolife Coalition, (NV Dist. Ct., Dec. 19, 2011), a Nevada state trial court allowed an advocacy group to move ahead with attempts to obtain enough signatures to place a
proposed fetal personhood constitutional amendment on the 2012 ballot. The proposed amendment reads:
The intentional taking of a prenatal person's life shall never be allowed in this State.... [T]he term "prenatal person includes every human being at all stages of biological development before birth.
The court rejected a claim that the proposed amendment is invalid because it embraces more than one subject. However the court did require that the petition language describing the effect of the amendment be rewritten before petitions are circulated. The court set out the language that must be used in the new description. It reads in part:
All person are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights including the right to life. This initiative proposes to add a new section to the Nevada Constitution to protect a prenatal person's right to life.... The initiative would ... prevent all abortions even in the case of rape, incest or serious threats to the woman's health or life.... The initiative will impact some rights Nevada women currently have to utilize some forms of birth control, including the "pill;" and to access certain fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization. The initiative will affect embryonic stem cell research, which offers potential for treating diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's disease, heart disease and others.
According to a report from the
American Independent, proponents must obtain 72.352 valid signatures by June. Last year, a Nevada state court struck down attempts to circulate petitions for a different version of a personhood amendment (see
prior posting) and the state Supreme Court dismissed an appeal as moot (see
prior posting).
