HOW can a political journalist tell when immersion in one of the most cynical pursuits known to man has begun to blacken his soul as well? Here's one way: his first reaction to a bit of welcome news that contradicts his public prediction elicits not relief at the result, but embarrassment and shame at his prognostication. I already have one Von Hoffman award; I may as well clear space on my cabinet for another. Yesterday, Mississippi's voters, to my surprise rejected the personhood measure, which would have amended the state's constitution to define a person as "every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." The day before the race, polls showed the measure likely to pass, but barely, and the below-the-surface numbers gave opponents some hope: a large number of voters remained undecided, and demographically they were more like opponents than supporters. Haley Barbour, no friend to abortion rights, expressed concerns about the measure but voted for it. So did Johnny DuPree, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

Those concerns were well-founded: the initiative's wording was vague and its actual, real-world effects uncertain. To supporters like Richard Land, however, such concerns "completely miss the point of this ballot initiative". They "focus on the details...[while] the ballot initiative focuses on the basic moral principle that embryos are unique, never to be duplicated human beings from the moment of fertilisation onward and that civilized societies do not allow them to be dismembered and destroyed at will." Let's look first at that last clause. Mississippi is already one of the most difficult places for a woman to obtain an abortion. The notion that opposing the personhood amendment is tantamount to dismembering and destroying babies at will is grossly unfair not merely to supporters of abortion rights, but to Mississippians who may support the bill's fundamental objective of outlawing abortion but were nervous about the measure's actual effects. Secondly, call me a baby-dismembering secular-humanist commie, but asking voters to support a law without "focus[ing] on the details" is the height of civic irresponsibility. To do so is, in effect, is to turn them into a flock of sheep rather than an informed citizenry. It is to ask voters to do what you tell them to do but not to think too much about it. It is a fundamentally anti-democratic impulse, and if I had to guess a reason why Mississippi's largely conservative, Christian voters rejected an amendment whose ultimate intent they likely support, it is precisely because voting for it requires too much not-thinking.

This is the third time a personhood measure has been on a state's ballot, and the third time it has failed (the previous ones were in Colorado in 2008 and 2010). Next year similar measures will appear on the ballots of another half-dozen states. Had it passed, the wind would have been at their backs. But passage may also have been good for the pro-choice movement. As Fred Barnes notes, the pro-life movement has been stunningly, relentlessly successful in recent years, "vitiating Roe without overturning it", largely by imposing restrictions on abortion (Roe v Wade says women have the right to abort a pregnancy in the first trimester; it does not say that states have to make it easy). Personhood opens a new front in the battle; it attacks Roe's constitutional justification head on. Pro-choice groups could have raised a lot of money behind that bogeyman. Abortion opponents believe, with some justification, that the current Supreme Court is likely more hostile to both abortion rights and the fancy constitutional footwork that Justice Blackmun used to guarantee them in Roe. But that does not mean they would side with personhood supporters in a court battle. If the goal of pro-lifers is to make abortions increasingly rare and difficult to obtain, they would be well advised to remain on the current slow, steady, successful course. Personhood is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.