Yesterday, Antonia Zerbisias’ column in the Toronto Star hit me like a punch in the gut. The right to choose is hardly a new topic, but new threats to this right seem to pop up every time we turn around.

Although it’s not getting much mainstream coverage, two states, Colorado and South Dakota, have measures on their ballots that would strip women not only of their reproductive rights but would also define life as beginning at conception.

In other words, zygotes would be defined as legal persons, with their rights protected by the state.

That would mean that pregnant women would be wholly owned by government, as walking incubators, with absolutely no right to make any decisions, and I mean any decisions, about their, as John McCain disdainfully put it in air quotes two weeks ago, “health.”