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As you may have noticed, the tea party led GOP has targeted the pro-choice movement intensely as they assumed their new positions in government following the 2010 midterm elections. Were these deficit fetishists – concerned about job creation and reducing the federal deficit? Nope. Did you believe they would? Nope. Did the media dismiss the extreme religious right’s influence on the tea party coalition when it formed? Yes. Make no mistake about it. The vast majority of self-identified tea partiers check the box marked “social conservative,” which means anti-abortion zealots. C&L and many other sites have been highlighting the rash of anti-choice legislation that has either already been passed or is being shopped as we speak. The latest wave that’s beginning to gather steam is the Personhood amendments which Susie wrote about earlier this month. You’ve heard the pre-born meme and as Susie wrote Don’t kid yourself that this is “just” Mississippi. The Christian right is going after birth control in every state: Mississippi voters will be allowed to decide on a ballot measure that defines “personhood” from the moment of fertilization, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled last week. The measure could potentially outlaw abortions, birth control, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research across the state. Measure 26, which will bypass the legislature and go straight to a popular ballot vote, redefines the term “person” as it appears throughout Mississippi’s Bill of Rights to include “all human beings from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.” The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit against the proposal earlier this year, not based on its content or constitutionality, but because Mississippi state law says a ballot initiative cannot be used to change the Bill of Rights. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit in a 7-2 ruling, saying that it had no power to review any ballot initiative before the actual vote takes place. Let’s look at some of the interesting legal ramifications. If you go through in vitro fertilization, and it doesn’t work, you’d have to report that as a death. Same thing would go for very early miscarriages. How do we know you didn’t try to abort your pregnancy? Women would have to prove they didn’t murder their blastocyst/zygote/embryo/fetus. It’s now on the ballot in Mississippi so I think it’s time the WaPo/Bloomberg Televison moderators of the upcoming GOP debate in New Hampshire on October 11th step up to the plate and ask them if they support rape induced pregnancies and all the caveats of the Personhood amendment. We know how Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann will answer so they wouldn’t even have to respond, just a nod will do, but let’s hear from everyone else that has a chance to win the nomination. And they can Skype in Chris Christie and get his response too since conservatives are still begging him to run. Digby has more on the lunacy surrounding “Conceived in rape” forced pregnancy tour.