Nevada abortion statute targeted - News

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Oct. 22, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Nevada abortion statute targeted

Activist pursues personhood petition

By ED VOGEL and BEN SPILLMAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL CAPITAL BUREAU

CARSON CITY -- A longtime conservative activist announced Wednesday he is launching a petition drive to overturn the state's abortion rights law and prevent government from trying to end the lives of elderly people.

Richard Ziser said his proposed Personhood Constitutional Amendment is designed to ensure that no human being is deprived of "life, liberty or property" from the moment of biological development to the natural end of his life.

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The petition, if it secures the required number of signatures of registered voters, would appear on the 2010 and 2012 statewide election ballots.

If approved then by voters, there still would be obstacles to change, Legislative Counsel Bureau Brenda Erdoes said.

A 1990 voter-approved law puts the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision permitting abortion into Nevada statutes. Even if the state law were changed, it wouldn't override the Supreme Court's abortion ruling, she said.

Ziser said he was asked to circulate the personhood petition by several socially conservative and religious groups.

Their fear has been that Congress will pass health care legislation that includes reducing medical care to elderly people and helping them in making end-of-life decisions. Supporters of the health care legislation contend that such language is not in the bill.

Ziser's Personhood Nevada organization opposes abortion, but that is not the sole thrust of the petition, he said.

"The whole purpose of the petition is the protection of human rights and civil rights for all humans," he said. "We are talking about the full spectrum of life from the beginning to the end."

Elisa Maser, president and chief executive officer of Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood Affiliates, the lobbying and political arm of Planned Parenthood in Nevada, with advocates for reproductive rights, compared the initiative to a similar effort in Colorado in 2008.

That personhood initiative lost by a 3-to-1 margin, she said.

"It puts government, lawyers and the courts in the middle of our personal lives," Maser said.

She said her group and others are still studying Ziser's initiative and might challenge it on the grounds that it is too vague.

"That clearly is a critical question at this point," she said.

Ryan Erwin, a Republican political consultant who specializes in health issues, said it is too early to tell whether Ziser's initiative will have broader political implications.

"You can look at something initially on paper and know it will have the potential to drive turnout," Erwin said of hot-button issues.

But it takes more than a wedge issue on paper to drive voters to the polls, he said.

"It has to be qualified. Then it has to pass the legal scrutiny. Once it is qualified, it has to be funded well enough to run an actual campaign," Erwin said.

As for the personhood initiative, "it is way too early to gauge the validity of it," he said.

Ziser would not say how much money has been pledged for the petition drive.

In recent years, nearly every petition circulated around the state has been challenged in court. Successful petition drives have needed $1 million.

"The groups say they will raise the funds," he said, referring to the organizations supporting his cause: the Crisis Pregnancy Center, the Christian Action Council and the American Life League, a national Catholic group that opposes abortion and euthanasia.

"Obviously there are going to be legal costs," he said.

Ziser said he will have to rely on a lot of volunteers to collect the required signatures.

But without paid petition circulators, petition drives almost always have failed to secure spots on the Nevada election ballot in recent election cycles.

Before the petition can be put on the November 2010 ballot, Personhood Nevada needs to collect 97,002 valid signatures on its petitions by Aug. 4.

Anyone can file a legal challenge to the petition and its language by Nov. 12.

Because the petition proposes amending the state constitution, it requires a favorable vote of the people both in the 2010 and 2012 general elections.

Ziser is a former U.S. Senate candidate and the leader of the group that put the Protection of Marriage amendment before voters earlier this decade.

Voters approved the amendment, which specifies a marriage can be between only one man and one woman. Now the amendment is part of the state's constitution.

Ziser said he believes that fewer Nevadans support abortion rights today than 20 years ago.

Young people are more anti-abortion and are more aware that life starts at the moment of conception, he said.

He noted that young adults now often hang sonogram pictures of their children taken in the womb, an indication that they know life starts long before birth.

"I saw one in a real estate office yesterday," Ziser said.

Contact reporter Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901. Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.

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Please enter your name Name: Please enter your email Email: Please enter a comment COMMENTS : (word count limit is 300) You have reached the maximum number of words allowed Current Word Count: Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background. Jon wrote on October 22, 2009 11:40 PM: Constitutional scholar Herbert Titus wrote on this issue along with Christine Ross in a May/June 1999 article in the magazine "Life Advocate." The article, titled "Abortion is NOT Legal," is reproduced on the website of IgnoreRoe. Titus' legal analysis leads him to recommend that state and local officials should deem Roe v. Wade as being an unconstitutional court ruling, and thus to nullify it, i.e., ignore and render it void within their jurisdictions, and subsequently to start prosecuting for abortion. Regardless of one's opinion on the issue, it's an interesting legal article, and I recommend that anyone who is interested in this story look it up and read it. Don Best wrote on October 22, 2009 07:54 PM: So your girlfriend smokes a little dope. A day later she has a spontaneous abortion. A little fetus. Who did she kill? What was the fetus's name-Irving? No, she aborted a cluster of cells. What do you convict her of? Cell killer? Until the cluster of cells takes a breath of air, it isn't a baby. Period. Mr. B have you ever wrote on October 22, 2009 06:12 PM: Mr. B, Have you ever READ Roe v. Wade? Hmmm. its been the LAW of the LAND since 1973, 1973, 1973, 1973, 1973, 1973 Take a night off from your hate MAN and read it. It says, LET THE WOMAN DECIDE. You are a MAN. Stay the HELL OUT OF A WOMANS RIGHT TO CHOOSE!!!! Jen wrote on October 22, 2009 04:03 PM: I'm sorry Andy - I'm not saying my gender is a walk in the park! LOL!! I know we're not!! What I'm saying, it seems to me that men are behind a lot of this drive to restrict the privacy rights of women... Andy Dworkin wrote on October 22, 2009 02:23 PM: Jen-Take it eaasy, girlfriend. You were doing o.k. with that first line, butg get over the man-bashing. Let's face it, your gender, in general, is no big prize either. Jen wrote on October 22, 2009 01:26 PM: Well said STOP - I don't want Palin or her witch dr. friends messing around with my PRIVATE medical records - Funny how it's always a MAN who is trying to prevent privacy between a woman and her Dr. STOP wrote on October 22, 2009 12:59 PM: Big Brother messing around where it doesn't belong. Any medical procedure is MY BUSINESS, not the cops, judges, city, or state. Thats called FREEDOM of Choice. STOP interfering where you don't belong...... And you wonder wrote on October 22, 2009 12:50 PM: And you wonder what the Republicans will think of next. Duh, been there, done that. What Richard Ziser is trying to do is run up the numbers for the Governors Race for REPUBLICANS in 2010. He KNOWS that the abortion junk law won't pass. He thinks the Governors Race is going to be close and that Republicans could lose the Governor's Office. Gotta have something to FIRE up the MORMON MASSES. I'm surprised he hasn't gone to the MORMON ELDERS and asked them to GET OUT THE VOTE!!! Funny, MORMON ELDERS did the same thing on Prop. 8. Fool me once, fool me twice!!!! Let's cut the bs. wrote on October 22, 2009 12:14 PM: Ok, setting aside the merits of the immigration debate for a second, we need to get real on this issue. When folks are complaining about "illegals and the poor getting free dialysis" I will just assume they don't think tehy should. They should have to pay or get no dialysis right? So assuming they can't pay, they die. I mean that's it, you don't get your blood cleaned and you die, that's why you need dialysis. So in the end, we are basically saying we want human beings (illegal or not, and the poor) dying in front of hospitals. We are ok with these people dying, because tehy don't make enough to live. Ok, I also think god will sort out "the murderers of the innocent..." America is truly losing it's soul. Too_many_Conservatives wrote on October 22, 2009 11:56 AM: The GOP is a BIG government party. They stand for "NOT Democrat", which is prety weak philosophical ground. Mud, really. Of course, Republicans stand proudly opposed to abortion, gay marriage, and euthenasia. Issues which nobody cares about except themselves. Read All Comments