Mississippi Personhood Amendment results now on the Atlas

[old timey villain]

Previously nobody had made a map of the results of this controversial amendment that (thankfully) didn't pass in the fall of 2011. If you recall, some pro life groups successfully got this amendment on the ballot down in Mississippi as sort of a test to see whether the idea of personhood, which aimed to severely restrict abortion, could pass. Mississippi was chosen since it's very religious and conservative. Many polls showed the measure passing at first, but in the final weeks of the campaign support began to slip as high profile Republicans like Haley Barbour expressed skepticism about aspects of the amendment. It ended up failing by 15 points.



To me this shows that there is a big disconnect between talking about restricting abortion and actually doing it. Even in a state like Mississippi, most people are wary of getting rid of the right to choose. Once it became clear that the amendment could possibly restrict the right to terminate a  pregnancy even in the case of incest or health of the mother, you saw a lot of self professed pro life people changing their minds and voting against it.

Some interesting things about the results:

1) It looks like the majority of whites in Mississippi still voted for the amendment. In the whitest area of the state, Northeast MS, voters strongly supported it. It also passed in most heavily white, rural counties throughout the state. Although it was close.

2) It failed miserably in the blackest areas of the state, including the Mississippi Delta. This kind of defeats the GOP talking point that most African Americans are actually pro life. In this instance, they were not.

3) There aren't many truly suburban areas in Mississippi, but where they do exist, the amendment failed. Desoto and Rankin counties are majority white, suburban communities of Memphis and Jackson, respectively, and both counties voted it down. These two counties have higher income and education levels than the rest of the state, so while the amendment did well among working class whites, it probably offended the sensibilities of upper class whites in the state, even Republican ones.

4) It didn't pass along the coast, also majority white. This is partly because the area is also more affluent than the rest of the state. Interestingly, there are a lot of Catholics along the coast since it's influenced by Louisiana, but that didn't seem to help the amendment down here.

[Indy Texas]

This is a reminder that simply blanketing people with either "pro-life" or "pro-choice" labels is a poor way of gauging support for specific policies. There is no contradiction between opposing abortion in most circumstances and not wanting to ban it in all circumstances. There is also no contradiction between supporting the right to an abortion in most circumstances and wanting to restrict it in some circumstances.

And besides, if fetuses were declared people, would they be counted on censuses? Would pregnant women get to use the carpool lane? Would they have to buy a child ticket for their fetus when they went to the movies? Do we all need to add nine months to our age since even before we were born we were still people?

[nolesfan2011]

Thanks for the map and everything, I just wanted to throw in that one of the ways this amendment went down was because the opponents of it expanded the issue at hand beyond just "abortion". 

They talked about how it could impact fertility treatments and such along with pointing out the major members of the medical community were opposed to it, and that helped turn the tide beyond just someone being "pro-choice" or "pro-life".

[7,052,770]

I'd say it failed primarily for these reasons:

• The Catholic Church, along with most every non-Baptist church, was against it and pretty active in encouraging people to vote no.  This apparently came as a shock to the pro-26 leaders and is probably the reason why the Coast counties went no.
• The NAACP was also against, apparently surprising the pro-26 leaders.
• People realized it would probably ban birth control pills, which wasn't going to fly in wealthy white suburbs in DeSoto, Rankin, and Madison counties.
• It may have helped that the Mississippi Democratic Party sat this one out and let others do the work for them.  This way, conservative Republicans didn't have to wrestle with being on the liberal/Democratic side in voting no.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

There was also an anti-gay marriage amendment in 2006 that failed in Arizona because it was so complicated.  In 2008, though, Arizona ended up passing a simpler gay marriage ban (which was largely overshadowed by Proposition 8 in California).  It's possible that that was the problem with this amendment in Mississippi.  If they tried again with a simpler amendment, it might pass (though not without a massive fight from the pro-choice lobby.) 

Interestingly, a personhood amendment in Colorado in 2008  failed by the barest of margins.  Wonder how a state like Colorado could vote more in favor of personhood than a state with a strong religious conservative population like Mississippi.

[Gass3268]

There was also an anti-gay marriage amendment in 2006 that failed in Arizona because it was so complicated.  In 2008, though, Arizona ended up passing a simpler gay marriage ban (which was largely overshadowed by Proposition 8 in California).  It's possible that that was the problem with this amendment in Mississippi.  If they tried again with a simpler amendment, it might pass (though not without a massive fight from the pro-choice lobby.) 

Interestingly, a personhood amendment in Colorado in 2008  failed by the barest of margins.  Wonder how a state like Colorado could vote more in favor of personhood than a state with a strong religious conservative population like Mississippi.

No it didn't. It failed by 46.42%.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Colorado_Definition_of_Person_Initiative,_Amendment_48_(2008)