By Bob Allen
Oklahoma Baptists applauded an attempt to amend the state’s constitution to declare an embryo a human being from the moment of conception in a resolution at the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma’s Nov. 12-13 annual meeting at First Baptist Church in Moore, Okla.
Though the attempt was unsuccessful, messengers to the 2012 annual meeting commended “the tireless efforts of all Oklahomans, including elected officials, who play a role in recognizing that life begins at conception.”
“We recognize the full personhood of the unborn and sanctity of human life as created by God from conception to natural death,” the resolution stated.
Last year, Oklahoma Baptists supported legislation that would curb abortion and “acknowledge the full personhood of the unborn.” In April, the state convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission joined forces with Catholics and others in an anti-abortion coalition, called Personhood Oklahoma, to collect 150,000 petition signatures needed to place a “personhood” amendment on the November ballot.
The proposed amendment would have expanded the definition of “person” for the purpose of equal protection under the law to “include every human being, regardless of place of residence, race, gender, age, disability, health, level of function, condition of dependency, or method of reproduction, from the beginning of biological development to the end of natural life.”
It would have prohibited “the intentional killing of any such ‘person’ without due process of law.”
The Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously vetoed the ballot initiative in April, finding it “clearly unconstitutional” in light of a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Pennsylvania that upheld a woman’s right to choose.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined without comment to hear an appeal of the ruling Oct. 29.
A stated goal of the personhood movement is to overturn Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that established abortion rights. Advocates contend there is new medical evidence about when life begins that was not available to justices when they decided the issue in 1973.
Personhood initiatives have been tried in several states in recent years, but so far none have been passed into law. Colorado voters rejected personhood amendments in 2008 and 2010, and this year a third attempt failed when backers couldn’t get enough signatures to get the proposal on the November ballot.
Mississippi voters rejected a personhood amendment in 2011, despite strong backing for the measure from the Mississippi Baptist Convention. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, compared the moral issue to the abolition of slavery.
This year’s resolution by Oklahoma Baptists described abortion as “one of the greatest evils of our time.” It encouraged church members “to take a pro-active role in promoting the sanctity of human life through peaceful means and open discussions with their elected officials and fellow citizens.”
Another resolution called on President Obama to instruct the Department of Health and Human Services to withdraw a mandate for health-care plans to provide contraceptives to female employees. Southern Baptists traditionally have not opposed artificial birth control, but many conservatives believe some of the oral contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration work in ways similar to RU-486, a drug approved by the FDA for non-surgical abortion in the first 49 days of pregnancy, but not as birth control.