saving. and you are just as much worth saving if you live in the state of mississippi if you live in the state of new york or new jersey. i don t know where he s coming from with let s let the state decide when a woman can actually take steps to protect her own health and when she can t. the thing is, though, in this case, it was mississippi trying to decide as a state. mitt romney said that he would absolutely support something like that. now that mississippi has voted no for it, he says, no, no, no, don t say i was in favor. is there a is there a secret anti-abortion language by which what he s doing is making sense in some level? is this one of those things where there s jargon within the anti-abortion movement that might make this a consistent position, or is he just changing his mind about what he s for? i think he s just changing his mind about what he s for. but it s very interesting to me that the catholic bishops did not support the mississippi personhood amendment. in f
thing is really unpopular, so unpopular that it lost in a landslide even in uber conservative mississippi, the romney campaign now telling politico that mr. romney is being falsely characterized as supporting the mississippi bill. see, clear as day, he doesn t support that thing that everybody hates. he just said that he would support it, absolutely. don t you see the difference? wow. joining us now is terry o neill. i know last night you spent last night refreshing your browser every five seconds for election returns, so thanks for being here. it s great to be here. do you have an opinion about why mitt romney cannot make up his mind about personhood? you know, i don t understand it. and i m really disturbed by his suggestion that this should be thrown out to the states and allow the states to make a decision. the last time i checked, a woman s life is a life worth saving. and you are just as much worth saving if you live in the state of mississippi if you live in
and i like the fact that in mississippi, the voters of mississippi, who voted basically, 60-44, a very conservative, republican governor. they also voted virtually 60-44, 58-42, to say, no, we really do want women to have access to birth control. and we really do want women to be able to survive an eck topic pregnancy, which could kill them, and could have killed them had this personhood initiative had passed. and we really do want women to have the basic right to protect their own health. when faced squarely with that question, even the very conservative community in mississippi said, no, they really want women to have access to health care. terry o neil, president of the national organization for women, thank you for your time tonight. nice to have you here. thanks. thank you so much. there were issues on the ballot last night and individual people on the ballot last tonight. there s a reasonable debate about what was the most fascinate issue, but there s a pretty clear-cut mos
only 39% of mississippians said they were pro-choice. so the ban abortion and birth control and ivf folks probably figured if they could get this fertilized egg as a person thing passed anywhere in the country, it would be in mississippi. they got mike huckabee and bret favre s wife to be celebrity endorsers. they produced a bunch of really slick-looking ads. they had a ton of religious right money. but, ultimately, a mostly grassroots opposition effort came together against the personhood amendment and to the surprise of lots and lots and lots of people, this happened. the scrappy, mostly home-grown dui opposition group defeated the personhood bill in mississippi by a ton. the no on personhood folks won more than 60 of the state s 82 counties, including haley barbour s home county. look at mississippi last night as compared to mississippi in 2004 with the gay marriage vote. which is not to same that this same electorate wouldn t vote to ban gay marriage again if given the chance, but
you to be able to do is to continue to extinguish innocent life. you see, if we could do that, satan wins. see, in the governor-elect al gory there, is what satan wants is to ban all abortions and hormonal birth control, it was satan who wanted that to fail in mississippi. as it turns out, that measure did fail in mississippi, but a huge margin, by double digits. so the state s next governor has the voters of mississippi to thank both for his and for satan s victories in last night s mississippi election. and now he is faced with the unique challenge of governing an electorate that he has accused of voting for satan by a 16-point margin. which would be awkward. the mississippi electorate is a very conservative one. these fertilized egg as person ones have not done well elsewhere in the country.