13.0°

The Alaska Department of Law has questioned the constitutionality of a ballot initiative that would recognize fetuses as legal persons, but that hasn't precluded Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell from his duty to approve the vetted petition for signature gathering.

Legal Personhood Initiative sponsor Christopher Kurka of Eagle River must collect 32,734 signatures within a year to qualify for the ballot.

The initiative campaign is one of several "personhood" campaigns under way around the nation by anti-abortion activists who have been stymied by the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling that declared abortion bans unconstitutional.

Kurka said that recognizing a fetus as a person is a step toward stopping abortion, but acknowledged that to do so entirely would be difficult.

"You can never eliminate abortion completely in a society because people area always going to do evil things," Kurka told Anchorage's KTUU-TV.

The initiative "brings to the forefront the issue of whether or not the unborn child is a person or not," he said.

LaRae Jones of the of the Juneau Pro-Choice Coalition said the initiative is one more in a series of unconstitutional attempts to restrict women's rights to legal and safe abortion.

"To me, it looks like they are trying to return us to back alley abortions," she said. "If a fetus is not viable and could not live on its own, then it is not a human being yet," Jones said.

Campbell's certification of the initiative came after Attorney General Dan Sullivan concluded that the initiative might have "legal issues," but met the state's criteria for being circulated as an initiative petition.

The standard only says that an initiative can't be "clearly unconstitutional," such as, Sullivan wrote in his legal opinion, if it tried to ban all abortions despite Roe v. Wade.

The case acts as "controlling law" on the subject, though it is less clear on the subject of when a fetus becomes a person.

"There is no controlling law that makes it clearly unconstitutional to extend legal person status to the moment of conception," Sullivan said, and noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to consider the question.

Sullivan's approved petition title and summary -- the information that will be atop the petitions voters will be asked to sign -- says the initiative "would not repeal or amend existing state law regulating abortion" but goes on to say that it "could impact some areas of the law, including criminal law, to extend rights and protections before birth."

Jones, of the Juneau Pro-Choice Coalition, said it might result in police investigations of miscarriages or other unintended consequences.

"It looks like it could criminalize a lot of stuff that they don't intend, or at least I hope they don't intend," she said.

Clover Simon, Alaska vice president of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, said the initiative is obviously unconstitutional.

"The intention of this initiative is to outlaw abortion," she said.

Simon said the group is still reviewing the matter and is considering legal action.

One further consequence could be increasing numbers of recipients of permanent fund dividends. Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Debbie Bitney said she had no idea how that would be interpreted.

"At this point in time, you have to actually be born to qualify," she said.