The War-On-Women: The Tuesday Edition

And it goes on and on.

Mississippi is trying to the lead the way on the Personhood Amendment.  From CBS News:

A national effort to put abortion bans into state constitutions is looking for its first victory next month in Mississippi, where voters are being asked to approve an amendment declaring that life begins when a human egg is fertilized.

Supporters hope the so-called personhood initiative will succeed in a Bible Belt state that already has some of the nation's toughest abortion regulations and only a single clinic where the procedures are performed.

The initiative is endorsed by both candidates in a governor's race that's being decided the same day. While Mississippi is the only state with such an amendment on the ballot this fall, efforts are under way to put the question to voters in at least four other states in 2012.

From North Carolina, where a judge is considering whether to prevent portions of North Carolina's new abortion restrictions from taking effect while a lawsuit challenging them goes through the federal courts:

Lawyers for the state and abortion rights groups argued their cases before U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles for 2 ½ hours Monday in a Greensboro courtroom.

Abortion providers sued last month, saying the new law requiring ultrasounds be performed so that women are shown the images is unconstitutional. Bebe Anderson with the Center for Reproductive Rights told Eagles the law is too vague and could subject doctors to penalties. Senior Deputy Attorney General Faison Hicks said the information doctors provide patients is truthful and advances the state's interest for a woman to carry the fetus to term.

And from Anywhere (and Everywhere), USA a nation-wide push for the “heart beat bill”:

Abortion opponents have a new weapon of choice: the “heartbeat bill.” A coalition of anti-abortion groups told the Associated Press last week that it was pushing to enact laws in all 50 states that would make women listen to a fetus’s heart beat before they could abort. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has introduced a similar federal bill, The Heartbeat Informed Consent Act, in Congress.

When the Supreme Court decided Roe, critics of abortion vowed to get it overturned. They have not succeeded in that. But they have managed to pass a wide array of laws — some upheld by the courts, others struck down — making access to abortion more difficult. The Supreme Court has ruled that states can impose some restrictions, such as 24-hour waiting periods and parental consent requirements, but has struck down others, such as laws forcing women to notify their spouses. The heartbeat laws are the latest effort in a decades-long campaign that — as conservatives gain strength at the state level—appears to be gaining ground.

Personhood. Ultrasounds. Heartbeats. A grassroots war, based in the states, designed to render Roe vs. Wade utterly unenforceable on the local level.