Reproductive rights advocates around the country cheered the sound defeat of Amendment 48, Colorado's November 2008 ballot initiative to grant personhood rights at the moment of conception. This victory was due in part to messaging that resonated with two voting blocs that are not often identified as dependable pro-choice voters - Latinos and labor union members.

Instrumental to this message development was the work of Denver-based Colorado Organization of Latinas for Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR).  Led by workers' rights activist Daniel Gonzales, COLOR's No on 48 campaign developed messages addressing the rights of families and the hardships Amendment 48 could pose to working people.

Gonzales polled 608 likely Latino voters in Colorado and found that about half were staunchly against abortion, while the other half were pro-choice but supported some regulation of abortion. Voters represented in his poll responded positively to messages framing Amendment 48 as an affront to the rights of families and working people, whereas messages that focused on individualistic reasons for rejecting Amendment 48 did not resonate as well.

Based on this poll, COLOR's No on 48 campaign literature included the following messages:

Even if I would not have an abortion myself I respect and support other families' decisions to do what is right for them, and

Families should be in charge of their own healthcare decisions. Amendment 48 would allow the government to make these decisions instead, and

Amendment 48 would grant constitutional rights to fertilized eggs. It would eliminate a family's right to make personal private decisions about their future and their health care.

"We knew we needed to use empathetic messages that emphasized family decision making over the individual," Gonzales said. "We also used those messages when talking to union leaders and union members, and that helped us get labor unions on board."

By contrast, mainstream reproductive rights groups developed messages about Amendment 48 that focused on individual rights, such as:

Amendment 48 affects important life decisions that should be made by individuals, their doctors, and families, not extremists rewriting the state constitution; and

Amendment 48 would eliminate a woman's right to make personal private decisions about her own body and her health.

The coalition to defeat Amendment 48 was broad, consisting of both mainstream reproductive rights organizations like Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains and NARAL Pro Choice Colorado, Republican Majority for Choice, religious groups like the Colorado Interfaith Initiative, as well as COLOR.

If passed, Amendment 48 would have amended the Colorado State Constitution to define the term "person" as "any human being from the moment of fertilization." The amendment and would have given zygotes, embryos and fetuses "inalienable rights, equality of justice and due process of law" and would have resulted in the criminalization of hormonal birth control, emergency contraception, and all abortions, even in the case of incest or rape.

Personhood initiatives like Amendment 48 have not yet succeeded in part because they tend to divide pro-lifers. Colorado's Amendment 48 failed to gain support of Republican United States Senate candidate Bob Schaffer, and the Catholic Church refused to weigh in on the measure. Colorado and Georgia are the only states that have acquired enough signatures to qualify personhood measures for the ballot.

Though Amendment 48 did seem menacing to the pro-choice community initially, having received over double the required petition signatures in order to secure a spot on the ballot, and having survived a legal challenge under Colorado's single subject rule, it was defeated 77% to 23%.

According to Gonzales, pro-family messaging as well as the extreme nature of the measure helped the No on 48 campaign acquire unlikely allies in the Latino and labor communities, which evolved into a coordinated get out the vote effort.

COLOR, along with Denver workers' rights groups 9 to 5 and FRESC for Good Jobs and Strong Communities, persuaded the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to sign on the No on 48 campaign. One key message COLOR posed to labor unions explained the implications Amendment 48 could have on their own members, such as unionized first responders.

"We explained to union groups that their own members like EMTs and fire fighters would have difficulty doing their jobs since Amendment 48 could force them to assume that every woman they treat is pregnant," Gonzales said.

Labor unions also agreed to support the No on 48 campaign because mainstream reproductive rights groups signed on to defeat anti-union initiatives. 

"When meeting with unions we pointed out that COLOR and other reproductive rights organizations have already been working hard to defeat anti-union initiatives," said Carmen Rhodes, Executive Director of FRESC, pointing out that Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains gained permission from its board of directors to help defeat at least one anti-union initiative. "It was clear that if we wouldn't have come together, we may not have won on any of our initiatives."

Despite its success in securing SEIU support, the No on 48 campaign fell just two votes shy of receiving an official AFL-CIO endorsement. Had it formally endorsed the No on 48 campaign, the AFL-CIO's campaign literature would have included a No on 48 message.

Nevertheless, COLOR and its labor allies engaged in aggressive door-to-door canvassing with campaign literature that grouped the No on 48 message with no-vote messages about four workers' rights initiatives: Amendment 46, an anti-affirmative action measure; Amendment 47, a right to work initiative; Amendment 49, which prevented employees from taking paycheck deductions to contribute to their labor unions; and Amendment 54, which prohibited unions from contributing to political causes. All five of these Colorado initiatives were listed in the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center's Top Ten Worst Initiatives. All but Amendment 54 were defeated.

COLOR's pre and post election polling shows that Latinos shifted from 31% no on 48 to 51% no on 48. There are currently no such statistics reflecting turnout among union voters. However, the joint literature and canvassing effort bolstered turnout on all of these initiatives.

"A lot of the initiatives on the ballot were bad for our community," Rhodes said. "As a community, we focused on how to create synergy around issues that weren't core to our work but attack our common values."