The convincing failure of Constitutional Initiative 100, which would have defined personhood as beginning with the fertilization of an egg, could be seen as evidence that Montanans have become rather sophisticated about such reproductive issues.

On the other hand, how sophisticated do you have to be in order to be wary of an anti-abortion measure that even Montana's Catholic bishops refused to support?

The IR takes pains not to editorialize, pro or con, about the general issue of abortion. What's the point? To be "pro-choice" or "pro-life" is a decision that perhaps may be debated with an open mind by some teenagers, but by the time people reach adulthood most of them have made an often difficult decision about which side is least wrong, and that's it. Further debate changes few if any minds.

But certain really far-out ideas that go way beyond abortion, such as the odd logic that a microscopic blob, lacking not only a mind but even any body parts, can somehow be a "person," are just plain silly.

CI-100 would not simply have banned any and all abortions for any reason, period. It had profound possible implications regarding certain kinds of birth control, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell research. More than other pro-life propositions, it would have blasted huge chunks of Montana's strong personal privacy rights right out of the state's constitution.

All in all, CI-100 was an ill-conceived ballot measure that, by reaching its radical tentacles into so many other areas of medicine, science and personal privacy, certainly deserved its fate.