Member Spotlight: Keith and Jennifer Mason fight for personhood of all

Keith and Jennifer Mason are trying to establish the personhood of all human beings—inside and outside the womb—one state at a time.

The Masons created Personhood USA in 2008 after working on a ballot initiative in Colorado to declare that unborn children are persons with rights equal to other living human beings. That effort failed, but the next day pro-lifers from other states started contacting them, wanting to pursue the same goal.

“Our phones were ringing off the hook with requests to help people start personhood efforts in their states,” Keith says.

Those efforts have spread to all 50 states, helped along by 92,000 volunteers. Personhood USA, which includes Keith as president, Jennifer as communications director, and several other staff members, recently had its biggest victory yet in North Dakota. That state’s Legislature approved a personhood amendment to the state constitution that will be on the 2014 ballot. Approval by both houses of a state legislature is a first for the personhood movement. The amendment defines human life as beginning at conception.

The North Dakota ballot initiative will join others in 2014 and 2015 in Mississippi, Colorado, Ohio, and Florida.

Personhood USA is also going international, working with pro-life organizations in Ireland, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Portugal, England, and Canada. Keith has spent much time recently in Europe, where the Catholic Church has started a personhood petition.

The demands of trying to change laws and attitudes about unborn children on an international basis, though, don’t interfere in family life for the Masons. In fact, Keith says, “Personhood USA is definitely a family project.”

“We are blessed to be able to homeschool our children, so Jennifer works from home while I work out of the office,” Keith says. “Much of our conversation and free time revolves around working to save babies.”

Jennifer’s volunteer status with Personhood USA “makes it easier to work in the evenings or nap-time or when the kids are up in the morning. There also are a lot of things we can take the children to.”

It’s not without cost, though. Vandals attacked the Mason home in June 2012, heaving a 20-pound rock through the double-paned glass of their front door and spray painting the side of the house with obscenities. The attack, carried out with three children and a pregnant Jennifer sleeping inside, followed a Newsweek article on Personhood USA, which also resulted in written attacks and death threats at thedailybeast.com.

Personhood USA board member and lobbyist Dan Becker, who was profiled in a Member Spotlight in October 2008, applauded their courage.

“They’re a young couple standing in the gap on the life issue,” says Dan, who also has led personhood efforts in Georgia. “They have counted the costs, and I really appreciate them standing firm and true for the cause.”

Keith says that cause is to work “to abolish abortion state by state by filing constitutional amendments that recognize the legal rights of every human being—every person—from his or her earliest moments of life.”

“In many states the only way to get an amendment on the ballot is by collecting signatures from registered voters, so a lot of our time is spent collecting those signatures,” he says. “As we do that, we have many opportunities to educate and to share our faith.”

They also share their passion. There is no doubt that the Masons and others involved with Personhood USA are going all out to abolish abortion.

“We’re in it to end it,” Jennifer says. “We’re not going to compromise. We’re just saying every human being is a person and every person has a right to live. And that’s it.”

It’s what Dan Becker calls a “return to first principles” for the pro-life movement. Education is a key part of the effort, which is why Personhood USA has created a Personhood Education website.

“What we’re doing requires a lot of cultural and social change,” Jennifer says. “One of the biggest things culturally is recognizing the value of human life in general. Right now, we have a culture of death: school shootings every year, tragedies that happen consistently because of the general lack of respect for human life.”

The need for change extends into the Church as well, the Masons say.

“We have a lot of cultural Christians who are not active, not willing to stand up for what’s right,” Jennifer says. “We believe God has called each of us to stand up in defense of the unborn, because abortion is the greatest evil of our day.”

However, God is working, she adds. Churches are coming together more often to fight abortion and help mothers and babies. Pastors are preaching on the right to life more than once a year, which is important, Keith says.

The Masons got their start educating people about the humanity of unborn children as part of the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust group. After they married, they led a tour of college and high school campuses. When organizers started the 2008 Colorado personhood effort, they asked Keith and Jennifer to help. The Masons did so eagerly, and the seeds of Personhood USA were planted and are now blossoming across the nation.

The personhood amendments they champion are usually just a few sentences aimed at legally recognizing and protecting unborn children as human beings with full rights like other human beings, Jennifer says. They’re aimed at what is called the “Blackmun Hole” of the Roe v. Wade decision forcing legalization of abortion in all 50 states. In that decision, Justice Harry Blackmun made what Keith calls a “startling admission.”

“If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment,” Blackmun wrote.

Jennifer points out that since we now have a “window into the womb” thanks to ultrasound technology, “there’s no question scientifically that that child is a person.”

“We look at that as a loophole in the Roe v. Wade decision, and we’re trying to pass personhood amendments that say all people—whether they’re in the womb or out of the womb—are people, and all people in the U.S. have constitutional rights,” she says.

While personhood amendments have not yet made it into any state constitutions, the Masons still see fruit from Personhood USA’s efforts.

For instance, even though their 2010 Colorado personhood amendment was defeated, “we converted hundreds of thousands of people to a 100 percent pro-life position, which is pretty difficult to do.” They also increased their share of the vote in 2010 from 2008 by 2.5 percent, impressive due to the opposition mounted against the amendment.

“Planned Parenthood spends millions to defeat us,” she says. “We don’t have that kind of money. We’re a grassroots movement. They have massive amounts of money and still they are so threatened by our personhood amendments that they do whatever they can. And while they have defeated us several times, I feel like we are learning some of their tricks now. We can anticipate their movements a little more.”

Another campaign success is that Personhood USA appears to be saving babies just by making its amendment efforts. During campaigns, Personhood USA frequently gets phone calls from women who decided not to have an abortion once they understood the concept of personhood, the Masons say. Jennifer also says that polls show a shift towards the pro-life position around the times that Personhood USA launched some of its biggest educational campaigns.

“We’re not just trying to end abortion,” she says. “We’re trying to change public opinion about abortion, because you can’t deny the personhood of the child.”