Antiabortion movement hoping to win poll in Miss.

AN antiabortion movement that is gaining momentum around the US is hoping for its first electoral victory Tuesday, when Mississippi voters will decide whether to designate a fertilized egg as a person and potentially label its destruction an act of murder.

If approved, the nation’s first “personhood” amendment could criminalize abortion and limit in-vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control.

It also would give a jolt of energy to a national movement that views mainstream antiabortion activists as timid and complacent.

Les Riley, founder of Personhood Mississippi and father of 10 initiated the state’s effort. “We’re just going to the heart of the matter, which is: Is this a person or not? God says it is, and science has confirmed it.”

“Life-at-conception” ballot initiatives in other parts of the country, including Colorado last year, have failed amid concerns about their far-reaching, and in some cases unforeseeable, implications.

But proponents of the amendment – who were inspired partly by the tea party movement – say they are more confident of victory in Mississippi, a Bible Belt state where antiabortion sentiment runs high and the laws governing the procedure are so strict that just one clinic provides abortions.

Opponents of the measure, including Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, have cast it more broadly as an infringement on women’s health and an example of government overreach.

Still, the measure has broad backing across party lines, with both the Republican and Democratic gubernatorial candidates voicing support for it.

A 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade legalized abortion.

Personhood efforts are underway in more than a dozen states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Ohio. Many legal experts say the Mississippi measure probably would not stand up in court. If upheld, it could open a host of sticky questions, including whether a woman with cancer would be prevented from receiving chemotherapy if it could kill her fetus.

National medical groups have opposed personhood efforts, saying that they ignore the fact that, left to nature, a large number of fertilized eggs do not survive to birth.

More on this report from The Washington Post