Roundup: Colorado’s No on 62 Campaign Kicks Off (And Recycles!)

Beth Saunders

No on 62 held a rally yesterday to kick off their campaign to defeat the Colorado ballot measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person. Luckily, they kept their yard signs from two years ago, when they defeated a near-identical measure.

No on 62 held a rally yesterday to kick off their campaign to defeat the Colorado ballot measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person. (Read Robin’s roundup on the campaign from about a month ago.) Luckily, they kept their yard signs from two years ago, when they defeated a near-identical measure. From the DenverChannel.com:

(Fofi) Mendez said her group would spend just over $1 million this fall campaigning against the ballot measure. But that’s less than the $1.7 million the same coalition spent in 2008 to defeat the amendment. Even the group’s yard signs and stickers have been recycled, just substituting out the new amendment number (62) for the old one. Coalition members seemed confident they’d beat back the amendment again.

Let’s listen in on some of the speakers, shall we?

“Amendment 62 is dangerous,” Vicki Cowart of Planned Parenthood told a large crowd gathered on the west steps of the Capitol.  “It eliminates a woman’s right to make personal, private decisions about her body and her health.”

“This deeply personal and painful moral decision is best left to a woman,” said Rev. Dawn Riley Duval of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, “And her doctor and God!” she shouted to loud applause.

Lifenews, of all places, points out that the Personhood Colorado gang is missing a few major anti-choice players in the state. Amendment 62

does not enjoy the support of many pro-life groups such as Focus on the Family, Colorado Citizens for Life, or the state’s Catholic bishops.

They say the amendment will certainly be overturned by the courts, adding to the pro-abortion list of cases affirming abortion, and that a better way to stop abortions is to change the courts so Roe can be overturned and abortions can be prohibited.

They are also concerned Colorado taxpayers will be stuck footing Planned Parenthood’s legal bills after a potential defeat in the courts defending the amendment.

But, of course, the amendment does have its supporters. Among them is Ken Buck, Republican nominee for Senate, who is running against incumbent Michael Bennet. And what does supporting the amendment really mean? The Colorado Independent sets the record straight:

It’s also a fact, pointed out repeatedly by the Colorado Independent, that Buck is not alone among this year’s major GOP candidates in his support for the personhood position. Every politician who supports the amendment, whether or not they dodge or equivocate on these questions, takes the same stance as does Buck. A fertilized egg with full citizen’s rights can’t be killed or experimented on or destroyed through attempts to implant it into someone else’s womb and so on, no matter how the egg came to be fertilized, without drawing the full attention of the law. Under the statutes that personhood would write, any of the above actions that results in a destroyed fertilized egg opens a homicide file for the authorities to pursue.

Mini-roundup: Remember the fight to eliminate abortion coverage from student health care at the University of North Carolina? Representatives from UNC Medical Students for Choice respond in the Daily Tar Heel.

Sep 1

Aug 31