It seems like every state is now trying to pass a personhood amendment.  But how successful are they likely to be at using the movement to overturn Roe V. Wade?

Not very, says one attorney.

Via the Las Vegas News Review:

The “personhood” movement draws its inspiration from a section of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s majority opinion in the original Roe v. Wade ruling that recognized the right to abortion. In one section, Blackmun wrote:

“The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case [the case for abortion], of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” (Emphasis added.)

However, some analysts have said that by lifting out and focusing on that one section of the opinion, anti-abortion activists have given the language meaning it does not have.

Clark Forsythe, an anti-abortion attorney, has written that personhood advocates missed Blackmun’s “ironic” tone and called the personhood claim an “urban legend” that cannot override the federal constitution.

In the conservative magazine National Review, Forsythe wrote, “The myth has been widely reported that Justice Blackmun stated in Roe that ‘we don’t know when life begins.’ Some state legislatures have come to believe that they can answer that question by asserting that life begins at conception. … [T]his is a classic case of reading the language out of context. The phrase ‘suggestion of personhood’ in Blackmun’s opinion clearly refers to the earlier phrase ‘within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.’ It does not mean “personhood” in any broader medical, moral, or legal sense.”

So does that make personhood the new “used needles in the McDonald’s ball pit?”