Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Colorado:
SECTION 1. Article II of the constitution of the state of Colorado is
amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION to read:
Section 31. Person defined. As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the terms "person" or "persons" shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization.
Before voters are inundated with months of campaigning, we put the
measure, now known as Proposed Amendment 48, to a very different test.
We asked a cross-section of religious scholars, clergy and spiritual
leaders - what moral precedent could this potential amendment set? - to
determine if there is uniformity on the theological definition of
personhood.
Rev. Dr. Phil Campbell, a member of The Interfaith
Alliance of Colorado Board of Directors, United Church of Christ
minister and Director of Ministry Studies at the Iliff School of
Theology in Denver
The ethical obligation and theological worldview that is dominant in most religious traditions is caring for persons on this side of birth.
The moral imperative is to commit ourselves to the care of the born rather than divert our attention to a category of life that is scantily attested to historically in any religious tradition. The moral issue this amendment raises is the shift away from the concern regarding the enormity of need of the born and the common ground that could be found among various religious traditions to address those needs.
I do not know of a religious community that would support this amendment - the view that life begins at fertilization - and supports its proposed goal in their own religious practice. For instance, adherents to the idea that life begins at fertilization (or conception) do not expect a fetus to be named. Nor do they support invitro baptismal ceremonies, naming ceremonies, or conduct burials for a miscarried fetus according to their religious tradition as they would for a person who has died. I believe there is a disconnect between what proponents of this measure proclaim and what they actually practice. This is a moral concern, as well as an ethical concern.
An amendment is not needed for religious communities to treat fetuses as human beings.
Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman, president of the Rocky Mountain Rabbinical Council
Coloradans seeking to place the proposition on the ballot that life begins at the moment of fertilization must of necessity claim to have God on their side because they are seeking to play God through their efforts.
Naming conception as the starting point for life is not a purely arbitrary act. A fertilized egg may reach term and be born. There is much that can happen along the way, not involving abortion, that can negate this possibility.
For perhaps this very reason Rabbinic Judaism held that life begins only at birth. That is the law within Jewish life to this day. The rabbis had every bit as much claim to God in their decision as these anti-abortion forces have the right to attempt to bring a plebiscite in this state to say otherwise.
Without the question of abortion rights, however, this clearly wouldn't be a ballot issue, and we could all interpret God's word in and for our own lives without submitting it to a popular vote.
Rev. Nathan Woodliff-Stanley, a member of The Interfaith
Alliance of Colorado Board of Directors and Chair of TIA-CO's Public
Policy Commission. He is also Minister of Social Responsibility at
Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden
One moral precedent I think this initiative would set is that it would devalue all aspects of human life and moral choices beyond genetics.
Defining a fertilized egg as a person essentially says that nothing else counts about what we may think of as the essence of personhood - not consciousness, thoughts, feelings, autonomy, capacity to love and form relationships, creative imagination, a unique life history and experience, or anything else.
A fertilized egg has none of these qualitlies - the only thing it has in common with a person is human DNA. So in essence, this initiative says that human beings are nothing more than DNA - nothing else matters for a definition of personhood. By consequence, the existence of human DNA overrides all other moral considerations of personhood.
Pastor Brent Cunningham, Spiritual Formation, Timberline Church in Fort Collins
We support the full and inherent dignity of human beings across the lifespan. This is wholly consonant with the biblical worldview; one does not suddenly gain or acquire moral status at some stage in development. Human dignity or moral worth is inherent or intrinsic, and is not "assigned" by someone external to us when we reach their arbitrarily defined "state" of development/maturity/functional capacity.
Here is the danger. If moral status (dignity) is tied to an arbitrary definition of "personhood" (usually having to do with specific functional capacities), as opposed to simply being human, then we head down a road where we can just as easily "take it away" (moral worth).
We should wonder at the moral precedent have we set by "creating" the concept of a "Human non-person" (i.e., that one can be a member of the human species but not yet a person with full moral worth). This rather nonsensical (as well as dangerous) concept is the issue that this amendment seeks to rectify. And it does so by articulating a concept that has a long tradition in Western moral philosophy.
Jann Halloran, minister of the Prairie Unitarian
Universalist Church of Parker, maternity unit counselor and member of
the Colorado Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
It feels like there is one religious perspective but there's not. It seems so monolithic to say that from the second an egg is fertilized that this is now a person. And the woman that is carrying that person is now enslaved to whatever happens next.
There is a lot of guilt with miscarriage. Every woman wonders, 'What did I do wrong?' And now you're saying it was a murder. It's so cruel and it's so harsh.
To simply say that this is when life begins the second an egg is fertilized is dancing on the head of a pin. None of us really knows and we have to make the most complicated moral decisions we can make in the best interest of our health, our families and the potential new life.
This issue is so rife with sexism. Religion and men telling women how to live their lives, how to control their sexuality and how to control their reproductive systems. They don't give women the ethical agency that we were born with to make these decisions.
It's very scary. There are so many ramifications around birth control, fertility and how women have to deal with these issues in their real lives.
I don't think there are grounds for this in the Christian or Jewish tradition. Until a baby is born, you don't know what you have. That doesn't mean that anything that happens before birth isn't worthy of tears or anger or celebration or fear. But until the incredible gift of life is given and it comes out of the womb, that's as reasonable and moral a position of when life begins as when an egg is fertilized.
I also respect the passion of the religious right to hold very different positions and that's why I don't want one particular position in our constitution.
Rev. Patrick Hurley, president of the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado and retired pastor Presbyterian Church, Pueblo
The measure, proposed by Colorado for Equal Rights, is a full-throttle attack on the religious and civil liberties of all Coloradans.
We believe this measure would limit religious freedom by enshrining a particular religious definition of life in the Colorado Constitution. There is not a singular religious definition of life, despite what the proponents of this measure would have Coloradans believe. This measure is more than an attack on religious freedom, however. It is also a serious threat to women's health and women's civil rights.
The Interfaith Alliance of Colorado believes the personhood amendment sets a dangerous moral precedent as well.
Our moral imperative is to commit ourselves to the care of the born. This amendment shifts our attention away from the enormity of need of poor and marginalized Coloradans and the common ground that could be found among various religious traditions, political parties, and people of goodwill across the state. We should create laws that promote the common good and not narrow, extreme political and religious ideologies.
The first in a series of reports exploring the ramifications of the controversial Colorado state ballot measure.
"States rights" has been the battle cry of modern-day social conservatives over the last 50 years to oppose everything from racial desegregation and gay marriage to gun control. But no issue has raised culture warrior hackles more than abortion.
Less well-known than the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court's 1989 ruling on Webster v. Reproductive Health Services set the stage for a series of state skirmishes on restricting abortion and influencing public opinion through constitutional amendments, efforts that continue to this day.
Webster is a Missouri state law that restricts the use of state funding, employees and facilities to provide abortions.
However, the real test lies in the language. The law added a strict Christian construct to the preamble of the Missouri constitution -- that life begins at conception and therefore unborn children have protectable rights.
Now 20 years after Webster became law, a similar initiative is being attempted in Colorado through a proposed ballot measure to amend the state constitution:
Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Colorado:SECTION 1. Article II of the constitution of the state of Colorado is amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION to read:
Section 31. Person defined. As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the terms "person" or "persons" shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, only Missouri has successfully added religiously inspired conception language to its constitution in an attempt to negatively sway public opinion on abortion. Despite decades of trying, no other state has succeeded with this controversial approach. Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Oregon, Tennessee and South Carolina attempted either legislatively or via citizen initiative to codify personhood for fertilized eggs but every effort was soundly defeated, reports Dionne Scott of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
To Anita Allen, a University of Pennsylvania professor in both law and philosophy, states run into trouble with these efforts when they attempt to apply the conception language.
"The Court has emphasized that Roe v. Wade implies no limitation on the authority of a state to make a value judgment favoring childbirth over abortion," says Allen. "The preamble can be read simply to express a value judgment. A state is free through a referendum, preamble or law to state that life begins at conception but they don't have the constitutional right to regulate abortion or any other practice."
Supporters of Colorado's proposed ballot measure argue on the Colorado for Equal Rights Web site that "the simplicity of the text of this initiative speaks for itself."
However, Allen, an expert on privacy laws and ethics, isn't convinced that the measure is not simply a ploy to avoid the much more difficult persuasion campaign against birth control, emergency contraception, in-vitro fertilization and, ultimately, abortion itself. That debate has largely been long lost in the court of public opinion. A November 2006 Ciruli Associates poll reported that 56 percent of Colorado voters are pro-choice, a figure on par with the rest of the nation.
Thus, it would appear Roe v. Wade isn't going anywhere soon.
"It's a strategy," says Allen, of the proposed amendment. "And certainly a moralist could say, 'I really want to believe that from the moment of conception life begins and that that life deserves some legal protection.'
"But there are huge numbers of fertilized eggs that don't ever implant and implanted eggs that spontaneously abort. Plus, it raises the whole question about eggs that are fertilized outside the human body."
It's those not-so-simple questions that has some longtime anti-abortion activist groups lending less-than-tepid support.
The Colorado Catholic Conference refuted statements by Colorado for Equal Rights that the state's three bishops endorsed the proposal, according to a February press account. Further, Jennifer Kraska, executive director of the conference, raised concerns about the ballot group's structure, finances and tactics in she wholly dismissed any possibility of support by the Catholic Church.
Also notably absent is Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based multi-million dollar ministry and catalyst for much of the evangelical culture wars over the last three decades.
The prime backers of the ballot measure, namely American Right to Life Action, have a long and ugly history of calling out its putative allies. One spat last year resulted in National Right to Life yanking the charter of the state affiliate for attacking Rev. James Dobson in newspaper ads for not being anti-abortion enough. From the ashes of Colorado Right to Life rose the hard core American Right to Life Action, which is heavily engaged in petition-circulating efforts for the group Colorado for Equal Rights.
The splintering of what one would assume are allied groups over this ballot measure comes as no surprise to Clemson political science professor Laura Olson, an expert on religion and politics.
"Colorado is a real locus of religious right activism," states Olson. "There's lot of folks who are conservative evangelicals -- you would think that this is a core issue. If this initiative is having trouble getting support, I think it's a real commentary on how evangelicals are a lot more politically diverse than they're given credit for being. This is not the kind of tactic that a lot of people are going to sign on to, quite literally."
And that dissension among the ranks of conservative evangelical Christian and Catholic leadership leads to a whole host of questions -- namely, what if this thing does pass, then what?
Olson believes that the end point -- a total restriction on abortion -- isn't the real goal no matter how clever the political strategy may be to push for zygote civil rights.
"One of the things about the abortion issue more than any of the other culture war issues that's been so interesting is that both sides get so fired up," she says. "But I don't think either side wants things to change in any real perceptible way. It's a mobilizing tool."
And high-intensity fundraising and voter turnout is what fertilized-egg activists will be doing leading up to the November election.
But beyond the boots-on-the-ground tactics, Olson raises an interesting analogy in the national 2004 push to pass state Defense of Marriage Acts (DOMA) as a strategy to for getting re-election support for President Bush from anti-gay marriage, religiously motivated voters." It was the perfect get-out-the-vote strategy for conservative candidates/causes up and down the ticket by pairing an important federal race with a red-meat state ballot measure for the GOP faithful to gnaw on.
So in the context of the "fertilized egg as a person" amendment, if the Colorado Secretary of State approves the measure for the ballot this year, will those highly motivated "values voters" sit out the presidential election or will they if not enthusiastically, at least consistently, pull the lever for the GOP's presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain, a candidate who has had a great deal of difficulty making inroads with the conservative religious right?
Which seemingly puts the spotlight squarely on Colorado this cycle -- a traditional political swing state with a boisterous evangelical activist movement countered by an equally raucous libertarianesque civil liberties streak. Couple those forces with what is likely to be a very close 2008 presidential election, in addition to several other highly partisan state races and ballot measures, that will have the hard-core politicos salivating in the voting booth.
]]>Curtis, the vice president of American Right to Life Action, took ex-Rep. Schaffer, a fellow staunch anti-abortion advocate, to the proverbial woodshed following a series of news stories chronicling the congressman's support of guest worker policies on the Mariana Islands as a possible model for the continental United States' migrant labor woes.
The Marianas are long known for squalid sweatshop practices -- including accusations that the primarily Chinese and southeast Asian female workers were forced to undergo abortions and young girls were pushed into prostitution.
Schaffer's guest worker proposal and a later press statement that he never personally witnessed any forced abortions while on a $13,000 "fact-finding" trip to the Marianas in 1999 (paid by associates of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff) were met with howls of derision by the press, bloggers and the public.
Curtis, an outspoken proponent of a controversial proposed state ballot measure to prohibit abortion by conferring constitutional rights on fertilized eggs, seized the media controversy and ran with it.
He excoriated Schaffer in the Colorado press this week as being soft on abortion. Later, he accused Schaffer of lying about not having an opinion on the ballot measure that has caused deep fissures in the local anti-abortion movement.
While Schaffer has since retreated, his camp, notably campaign manager Dick Wadhams, hit back, calling Curtis "attention-starved" and referencing National Right to Life unceremoniously dumping Curtis' Colorado affiliate after its members attacked Focus on the Family founder James Dobson for not being anti-abortion enough in newspaper ads last year.
Then, two days ago, Curtis suddenly backed off. His public statements softened. He claimed the whole thing "got off issue" and was simply "political battles in the heat of the moment."
Except the battle is now being waged elsewhere -- far from public view where Curtis' involvement in the hard-line anti-abortion movement runs deep.
On April 26, another of Curtis' tax-exempt charities, LifeCommercials.com, which bills itself as "America's premier pro-life ministry," is hosting a fundraiser [PDF] at a hotel ballroom in Westminster, Colo., a conservative suburb northwest of Denver. The group produces provocative television ads on emergency contraception, abortion and eugenics.
Event organizers released a late-breaking update this morning gleefully announcing a "surprise guest" -- Shiu Yon Zhou, who claims she was forced to undergo an abortion in China.
The event will also feature a presentation by the Rev. Bob Enyart, who refers to himself as "America's most popular self-proclaimed right-wing, religious fanatic, homophobic, anti-choice talk show host." Enyart said on his Thursday radio program, "If China was killing Jews, would [Bob Schaffer] still vote for most-favored nation trading status because of the overarching economic and political considerations?"
A press release issued on Thursday by American Right to Life Action -- after Curtis claimed to the press that the disagreement was over -- cites Zhou and Curtis himself ramping up the anti-Schaffer rhetoric even higher:
"The pro-life movement will no longer give a pass to candidates like Bob Schaffer who look the other way when Chinese women are forced to abort their children," said Steve Curtis, former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party and spokesperson for American Right To Life Action. "At best Schaffer was negligent investigating coerced abortion in the Mariana Islands. Worse, he has voted (May 2000) for permanent normal trade relations with China, rewarding the regime that forces women to abort their children."
The vice president of Colorado's largest pro-life organization agrees. "At Colorado Right To Life, one of our dearest members, a young woman named Shiu Yon Zhou, is the victim of Chinese forced abortion policy," said Leslie Hanks. "While Bob Schaffer supported (1990s) most-favored nation trading status to Communist China, that government was literally forcing women like Shiu Yon down on operating tables and killing their unborn children."
"As a Chinese woman, I know the horror and shame of forced abortion," said Shiu Yon Zhou. "And I beg Mr. Schaffer to not look the other way, and to apologize for being part of the problem. He calls himself pro-life, but how can he be when he is not outraged by Chinese forced abortion? That is worse than pro-choice."
Also sharing the event dais will be Colorado for Equal Rights' Kristi Burton, the putative leader of the group sponsoring the "egg as a person" ballot measure -- the very issue that ignited Curtis-Schaffer kerfuffle.
]]>Colorado for Equal Rights (CER) has added another ultra-conservative ally in its push for a state constitutional amendment to confer legal rights on fertilized human eggs.
In a new video featured on the CER Web site (see below), Michael Hichborn, a spokesman for the American Life League, criticizes the Denver Post for mischaracterizing the proposed constitutional amendment as "an attempt to extend the legal protections of personhood to an egg." Hichborn continues sarcastically, "News flash to the Denver Post. Humans don't lay eggs. But we do make babies ..." while a picture of a baby pops out of a giant chicken egg replete with clucking hen and egg-breaking sound effects.
Kristi Burton, the 20-year-old correspondence law school student from Peyton, Colo., and founder of CER, complains in her brief on-camera segment that fellow conservatives have cold feet about the timing of the initiative.
Hichborn follows suit and drives home the point in no uncertain terms:
"Now, amazingly there are those that claim that now is not the right time for a personhood amendment. The old saying attributed to Edmund Burke 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing' is well applied to those standing on the sidelines because they decided to do just what Burke warned against. They're simply doing nothing. And while they sit on their hands waiting -- organizations like NARAL, Planned Parenthood and NOW are working to ensure another 35 years of killing babies."
Insulting one's target audience is a curious strategy to employ when, according to an April 6 news story in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Burton remarked that her group has collected just 60,000 of the 76,000 signatures required to place the initiative on the Colorado ballot. The deadline for submitting the petitions is May 14.
In addition to ALL, Burton's group has solicited the support of other ultra-conservative groups that don't mince words.
American Right to Life Action, a new Denver-based group, aims to upend National Right to Life, the standard-bearer antiabortion organization, which the young upstart views as too timid in its fight against "wicked courts" and "child-killing regulations." CER's petition coordinator and latest spokesman, Keith Mason, hails from Operation Rescue in Wichita, Kan., scene of some of the most strident protests in the nation.
Despite the tame wording, the measure appears to be an attempt to exploit the long-held belief by abortion foes that the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision never addressed the equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment. By conferring state constitutional rights on a fertilized egg, antiabortion activists hope to chip away at the Roe decision.
Opponents argue that the ballot wording is overly broad and could be interpreted to outlaw abortion and some contraceptives that interfere with the implantation of a fertilized egg into the uterus -- a key point in the dispute because a free-floating zygote does not meet the scientific definition of pregnancy since upwards of 50 percent of these cells do not naturally implant.
An ex-spokesman for CER confirmed the overarching goals to end abortion and curb hormone-based contraceptive use in press statements last summer but the group has since backed off making those claims in public.
]]>Huckabee made the announcement after spending time in Colorado Springs last weekend wooing religious conservative voters between a paid speaking gig at a Leadership Program of the Rockies event and a private chat with his old buddy, Rev. James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family.
While Huckabee's endorsement is being ballyhooed in the press as a boon to the ballot measure, the Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor has a long record of attempting to not just ban abortion but also contraception. Likewise, Arkansas has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation and there is a staggering need for contraceptive services in a state where nearly half the women have no access to publicly funded family planning programs, as noted by the Guttmacher Institute. His support of Colorado's proposed Amendment 36 is hardly a revelation to anybody paying attention.
Consequently, the endorsement begs a larger question: Who exactly is this helping?
The citizen initiative process to get a statewide measure on the ballot is fairly easy, some might say ridiculously so. Witness proposed Amendment 49 to impeach Sen. Hillary Clinton for spying on Americans with a "Superman camera" that can see through bedroom and bathroom ceilings.
That's Colorado-style democracy in action. Or maybe inaction, depending upon your point of view.
In the meantime, Kristi Burton, the 20-year-old student at a Bible-based correspondence law school, and her organization, Colorado for Equal Rights, are working to get the "egg as a person" initiative on the November ballot.
Proponents are about halfway through the six-month time frame to collect the fairly low threshold of 76,047 signatures of valid registered voters. A couple of brisk weekends patrolling the parking lots of Colorado's mega churches could take care of the petitions.
Enter Huckabee.
He won a scant 13 percent of the vote in the Colorado GOP caucuses and was positively clobbered by a 3-to-1 margin by ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in El Paso County -- the hotbed of the state's social conservative movement.
All told the Huckabee bully pulpit consists of fewer than 9,000 voters statewide -- or 8.5 percent of the signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot.
With Romney now out of the race and Huckabee trailing badly in the national hunt for delegates, is Team Huck (gasp) pandering for the votes of Romney supporters among the religious right who can't abide Sen. John McCain, the party's presumptive nominee?
Trouble is, it's not a leap of faith to assume that the "values voters" crowd who want an abortion ban and drastic curtailing of family planning services were already on the Huckabee bandwagon since Romney waffled on the issue so as not to offend his pro-business bloc, who are less driven by social issues.
So, there's just not a lot of voters to be won there.
But in the madcap world of campaign publicity, it's quite common for the darkest of the dark-horse candidates to take a controversial position in order to generate some badly needed press, which often turns into flush campaign coffers.
And on this score, Huckabee may very well declare "mission accomplished."
]]>The cultural outreach arm of Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based evangelical religious center and publishing powerhouse, relayed Dobson's statement, which it stressed, was a personal opinion and not made on behalf of the tax-exempt nonprofit ministry.
"I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, voted for embryonic stem-cell research to kill nascent human beings, opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, has little regard for freedom of speech, organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters in judicial hearings, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.
I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has sounded at times more like a member of the other party. McCain actually considered leaving the GOP caucus in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry's running mate in 2004. McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does NOT make the medicine go down. I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience.
But what a sad and melancholy decision this is for me and many other conservatives. Should Sen. McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime. I certainly can't vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family policy positions. If these are the nominees in November, I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life. These decisions are my personal views and do not represent the organization with which I am affiliated. They do reflect my deeply held convictions about the institution of the family, about moral and spiritual beliefs, and about the welfare of our country."
Much to the surprise of the conservative religious movement, Dobson also withheld an endorsement from fellow preacher Mike Huckabee's presidential bid at the Values Voter Summit last October, as reported by Colorado Confidential.
Mitt Romney's candidacy has not been well-received by religious leaders on the political left or right due to deep, long-standing theological differences between mainline Christians and the Church of Latter Day Saints, in which Romney is a prominent member.
While Dobson was not expected to throw his hat in the Romney camp, it has created a bit of a political pickle for him as Colorado's GOP establishment - long-time allies of Focus on the Family - are publicly supporting the former Massachusetts governor.
]]>The cultural outreach arm of Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based evangelical religious center and publishing powerhouse, relayed Dobson's statement, which it stressed, was a personal opinion and not made on behalf of the tax-exempt nonprofit ministry.
"I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, voted for embryonic stem-cell research to kill nascent human beings, opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, has little regard for freedom of speech, organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters in judicial hearings, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.
I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has sounded at times more like a member of the other party. McCain actually considered leaving the GOP caucus in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry's running mate in 2004. McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does NOT make the medicine go down. I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience.
But what a sad and melancholy decision this is for me and many other conservatives. Should Sen. McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime. I certainly can't vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family policy positions. If these are the nominees in November, I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life. These decisions are my personal views and do not represent the organization with which I am affiliated. They do reflect my deeply held convictions about the institution of the family, about moral and spiritual beliefs, and about the welfare of our country."
Much to the surprise of the conservative religious movement, Dobson also withheld an endorsement from fellow preacher Mike Huckabee's presidential bid at the Values Voter Summit last October, as reported by Colorado Confidential.
Mitt Romney's candidacy has not been well-received by religious leaders on the political left or right due to deep, long-standing theological differences between mainline Christians and the Church of Latter Day Saints, in which Romney is a prominent member.
While Dobson was not expected to throw his hat in the Romney camp, it has created a bit of a political pickle for him as Colorado's GOP establishment - long-time allies of Focus on the Family - are publicly supporting the former Massachusetts governor.
]]>Sandwiched between delegate-rich heavy weights California and New York, the Centennial State has gotten a surprising amount of love from the presidential candidates over the last week.
Barack Obama was met with thunderous applause from an estimated 10,000 onlookers packed into Magness Arena at the University of Denver with overflow crowds filling an adjacent gymnasium and outdoor lacrosse field. Twelve hours later, Bill Clinton took the same stage for a late night rally in support of his wife Hillary's bid for the White House to a crowd of about 5,000 who braved an unexpected snow storm to greet the former president.
On Friday, Mitt Romney made an appearance at a Denver car dealership while Ron Paul greeted supporters at the Colorado Convention Center each attracting about 1,500 people.
How those last minute appearances will affect Colorado's caucuses remains to be seen.
Especially in a state where more than a third of the electorate is unaffiliated with a political party. In order to participate in this evening's caucus, voters had to declare their party preference by Dec. 5.
However, a recently discovered glitch in the Secretary of State's voter database - which campaigns use to target potential caucus-goers - found it was inaccurately assigning party affiliations.
Still, the unprecedented attention is a new phenomenon here and bodes well for candidates with energetic grassroots campaigns and supporters with a firm grasp on caucus-wooing strategies.
Politicos are projecting more than 200,000 attendees across the state tonight.
]]>"The whole issue really saddens me," says Sigrid Fry-Revere, the Cato Institutes's director of bioethics, the nation's top libertarian think tank devoted to civil liberties and economic issues. "I am strongly against abortion on moral grounds. I do believe that a fertilized egg is a person; a human from the point of conception. But I don't believe that person has the same legal rights as the mother. And that's where all the problems come in.
"When there is a conflict between the rights of two people," she continues, "then certain people's rights take precedence. I don't know how you could possibly not choose the woman's rights over that of a human being that's just developing.
"Who in the hell is the legislature or anyone in the government to take decisions like that away from us?" asks Fry-Revere. "They are horribly, horribly difficult decisions. And yet, I think, they are life and death decisions. But I think they are very personal. Sometimes they have to do with religion and sometimes they don't."
She likens the civil liberty implications to women becoming communal property -- mere incubators -- unable to decide their own reproductive futures should voters approve the proposed law.
It's easy for the bill's proponents to dismiss concerns like Fry-Revere's as hysterics straight out of The Handmaid's Tale, a fictional story of a young woman's subjugation when she is forced to bear children in a future theocratic regime. But the comparison fades when one starts scratching the surface of the issue and sees the fracturing between the hard-line versus very hard-line anti-abortion Christian movements in their support of civil rights for fertilized eggs.
The National Right to Life Committee, long known for its conservative Bible-based stance to end abortion, has taken a much more incremental approach by pushing for strict regulation and even stricter social policies such as parental notification, waiting periods and a ban on Medicaid funding.
State anti-abortion groups aren't quite so charitable about the national group's strategy. Or patient.
Steve Curtis, former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, founded American Right to Life Action in November 2007 after meeting with a coalition of dozens of local abortion foes. Structured as a section 527 political committee -- named for the IRS code that governs its activities -- the new group will challenge the anti-abortion Christian street cred of the National Right to Life Committee while having a hand in state matters, like the "personhood" ballot measure.
When the Denver-based group isn't airing anti-Mitt Romney ads in the early primary states, it's taking to task Bob Jones III, chancellor of the ultra-conservative evangelical university bearing his name, and controversial pundit-author Ann Coulter for aiding and abetting the ex-Massachusetts governor's candidacy. Curtis says he supports perennial GOP candidate Alan Keyes -- who curiously was in town when the Colorado Supreme Court announced its surprise decision to allow the ballot measure to move forward. Keyes later took the dais in support of Colorado for Equal Rights at a Nov. 13 press conference.
However, one of the primary thrusts of American Right to Life Action is to challenge the "wicked courts" and oppose "child-killing regulations" through state-based laws attempting to overturn Roe v Wade primarily via the fight for fertilized egg rights:
The personhood wing of the pro-life movement is on the advance, and the child-killing regulators are on the defensive. As we press that momentum, at the same time, we will be educating everyone, unbelievers, Christians, governing officials, and ministry leaders, about the primacy of the God-given right to life, and the inherent failure, egotism, and immorality of negotiating that right away for some supposed benefit.
Other proponents of the measure, like Daniel Becker of Georgia Right to Life, have claimed in press statements that the goal is to introduce "personhood" initiatives in 30 states by either constitutional amendment, like Colorado, or direct action as expected this month in Georgia's newly convened 2008 state legislative session.
Thus far, activists in Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Oregon and Wisconsin, in addition to Colorado and Georgia, are taking up the cause for egg rights.
Meanwhile, Kristi Burton, the 20-year-old law student was quoted in a Dec. 3, 2007, Chicago Tribune article claiming that "she came up with the idea for the initiative about a year ago on her own" and founded Colorado for Equal Rights to advance the proposal. In more than a dozen media stories about Burton and her group, she has never acknowledged the support of abortion foes like American Right to Life Action or other controversial activists.
For instance, Colorado for Equal Rights' own field coordinator, Keith Mason, is also working with Keep Peace in Stapleton, a Denver anti-abortion group that organizes protests against the new administrative headquarters for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, including targeting the home of a local building subcontractor with the "Truth Truck," plastered with huge pictures of aborted fetuses. Mason, who hails from Kansas, is identified in several photographs on the Operation Rescue Web site as a "Truth Truck" driver in Wichita who was confronted by police for violating a local ordinance.
Colorado for Equal Rights did not return an email requesting comment on the progress of the ballot petition process, critics charges about the ballot measure or its involvement with Christian activist groups to shed more light on the origins and intent of the measure.
Next: Constitutional law scholars weigh in on the legal controversies surrounding egg "personhood" and more from Cato's bioethics expert.
]]>The new rule eliminates more than 22,000 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) reports from the government database -- or one-quarter of the nearly 90,000 industry reports filed annually that track dangerous chemicals. The GAO's audit notes that "more than 3,500 facilities [would] no longer report detailed information about their toxic chemical releases and waste management practices."
TRI reports are used by local officials and consumer advocacy groups to develop pollution prevention policies and mitigation strategies, to calculate fees for toxic emissions, and to determine emergency planning and Hazmat procedures.
To put this into context, 2.4 billion pounds of toxic pollution were released into U.S. air, land and water in 2004, according to the last report available. Meanwhile, the EPA has identified the basic toxicity of only seven percent of high-volume manufactured chemicals that are known to cause cancer, birth defects, developmental delays in children or reproductive disorders.
The GAO's audit revealed serious departures from the EPA's own rule-making process -- much at the urging of the president's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to expedite an easing of reporting standards for companies. The rushed process resulted in inadequate time to fully evaluate the local impact of the rule change while ignoring overwhelming public opposition. Auditors also noted that the EPA's flawed analysis "masked the disproportionately large impacts" of the reduced reporting and that the $6 million in financial benefits were overstated by as much as 25 percent due to inaccurate data from the OMB.
On July 17, Colorado Confidential reported the possible rule change and its impact on the state. The toxic pollution threat to reproductive health is especially stark. Toxicants in Colorado -- largely due to metal mining -- are known to cause, in sufficient quantities, spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, birth defects and sterility in both men and women.
Twelve states filed a suit against the EPA on Nov. 28 demanding reinstatement of the previous, more stringent TRI reporting standards.
According to Mark Salley, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, the state did not seriously pursue joining the suit "due to the low impact of the change in Colorado." Attorney General John Suthers' spokesman Nate Strauch claimed that his office was not aware of the suit.
With 6.8 million pounds of pollutants, Colorado ranks 13th in the nation for land releases of recognized carcinogens and developmental and reproductive toxicants. Ten of the states suing the EPA ranked significantly lower than Colorado.
The Toxic Release Inventory report was established by Congress in 1986 to better inform the public about toxic chemical releases in their communities. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who authored the original bill signed by President Ronald Reagan, recently introduced S. 595, "The Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act," an amendment to a decades-old law to strike the EPA's new reduced reporting rule. Denver's Diana DeGette, a Democrat, is the only Colorado lawmaker signed on as a co-sponsor to the equivalent House bill.
The Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act was passed in reaction to the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster -- a pesticide gas leak in India that killed an estimated 20,000 people and injured more than 120,000. A month later, the company disclosed that the same chemical was released more than two dozen times from a similar facility in West Virginia, with one 1985 incident sending 135 people to local hospitals.
In a case of supreme irony, the EPA last week announced a $3 million grant program to assist communities in reducing toxic pollution in neighborhoods -- evidently without the future benefit of TRI reports that provide detailed local data for releases of less than 5,000 pounds of toxins.
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Seven reproductive health advocates filed a legal challenge in August 2007 arguing that the ballot measure authored by Colorado for Equal Rights and approved by the all-male state Title Board did not meet the state's single-subject issue rule and was deceptive in its purpose.
The Court disagreed with the plaintiffs and affirmed the Title Board's action for proposed Initiative 36 which reads:
Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution defining the term "person" to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as "person" is used in those provisions of the Colorado constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law?
However, in press accounts, Colorado for Equal Rights spokesman Mark Meuser has repeatedly stated that the measure is intended to ban abortion and limit access to contraceptives in direct contradiction to the strict rules governing ballot language.
Proponents of the initiative are expected to easily collect the required 76,000 valid signatures by February 2008 to get the measure on the ballot.
]]>Dr. Ned Calonge, Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment's chief medical officer, confirmed to Colorado Confidential that the state did not renew its request for Title V funds, one of three primary federal funding streams allocated by Congress.
While Calonge agreed that there is overwhelming evidence that abstinence-until-marriage programs are not effective, he disputed the suggestion by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) that Colorado joined 12 other states in declining further Title V funding on philosophical grounds.
The reasons were far less sexy.
"Well, it's a little different than that," he said. "We just made the decision not to reapply."
Calonge acknowledged that the health department's conclusion was influenced by the on-going battle on Capitol Hill over the funding bloc's continuation. Last April, an independent study [PDF] by Mathematica Policy Research confirmed an earlier General Accountability Office report that the programs had no impact on teens' sexual abstinence rates.
Shortly after the report was released, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Michigan) and co-chair Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Denver) successfully eliminated continued funding for Title V from a spending bill under consideration by their committee. Dingell has described abstinence-only programs as "a colossal failure" while DeGette called them "a waste of money" in a July 2007 radio interview.
Backed by Wisconsin representative David Obey, chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, conservative lawmakers bypassed Dingell's committee and won an emergency 90-day funding package for the program in July and another three-month reprieve in September that will sustain the program through year's end. Continued funding for Title V remains up in the air.
That's when state bureaucracy stepped in and solved the problem with unblinking precision.
"The continuing resolution doesn't mesh with our state controller laws," Calonge explained. "They basically told us in July that the program was not funded. And then it was reauthorized for 90 days. The state purchasing system doesn't allow us to get bids and money out in that time frame. By the time we would have been able to put money out the door it would have been 90 days (when the July-September reprieve was slated to end). Then they reauthorized it for a second 90 days, but there's no way that we could predict that they were going to do that."
"So, we've actually closed down the program, and we're not putting any Title V money out the door now," he said. Colorado continues to accept other federal funding that includes abstinence as a part of comprehensive sex education.
But local reproductive health advocates shouldn't pop the champagne corks just yet.
As Calonge noted, all of the grantees that were previously awarded Title V grants can apply directly to the federal government for continued support, effectively bypassing the state which served as the contract monitor to ensure programs were meeting their obligations.
According to Gaye Morrison, Weld Waits, a school and community-based abstinence and relationship education program, the Weld County Commissioners were concerned as early as 2000 about fleeting federal dollars and began to fund the program with local dollars.
The spokeswoman for the Weld County Department of Public Health and the Environment admitted that the program cut back on programming and media outreach this summer when the continuation of last year's $65,000 Title V grant was in peril. However, the program continues with another annual $100,000 cash boost from the county while Weld Waits seeks replacement funding through other grant sources.
Morrison added that the loss of Title V money "gives us more flexibility to talk about contraception," which is discouraged within the strict confines of federally funded abstinence-only programs.
Last year, the state received $488,314 in Title V grants representing just 14 percent of a total $3.5 million annual allocation of federal abstinence-only program funding.
]]>Rep. David Obey (D-WI), chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, slipped the additional funding into a report prepared by the conference committee -- the body responsible for ironing out final discrepancies between the House and Senate versions of the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education budget bill before it goes to the president.
Obey, a fierce proponent of "just say no to sex education," crossed swords with reproductive health advocates earlier this summer and again last September when he first attempted to boost funding for the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program to $141 million, a 25 percent increase over last year. In press accounts, Obey argued that the extra funds are a necessary evil to placate conservative lawmakers in order to make the larger spending bill veto-proof.
Whether that strategy is sound remains to be seen. The conference committee report hasn't even landed on the president's desk yet, and he's already vowing to veto it. Congress has yet to override a presidential veto during this legislative session.
Conservative lawmakers who otherwise claim to be budget hawks gladly fund abstinence-only programs. Over the last 25 years, Congress has earmarked an estimated $1.5 billion to support the controversial programs.
Independent analyses of abstinence-only programs by the Government Accountability Office and Mathematica Policy Research [PDF] strongly criticized the programs' lack of scientifically accurate curricula, their little oversight, and their inability to demonstrate a direct, causal reduction in teen sexual activity.
A first-of-its-kind study of teenagers published in August 2007 found widely varying views on abstinence and virginity in stark contrast to the strict morality delivered by no-sex-until-marriage programs.
While teen pregnancy rates overall have decreased over the last decade, the reasons are in dispute. Abstinence-only proponents and religious leaders argue that their programs are making a mark while reproductive health advocates point to greater access to and use of contraceptives by adolescents.
Colorado received $3.5 million in federal abstinence program grants last year.
]]>These alarming figures are featured in "The State of Adolescent Sexual Health in Colorado 2007" from the Colorado Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy, Parenting and Prevention (COAPPP).
COAPPP executive director Lori Casillas believes the reasons behind the increase in Latina teen births are complex.
There is insufficient up to date research to properly explain the disparities of births to Latina teens. However, we do know that when youth are given full and comprehensive sexuality health education, access to affordable and quality family planning and reproductive health services, and opportunities to engage in conversations with their parents and caring adults in their lives, they make healthy and informed decisions about their reproductive health, parenting, and overall future.
The skyrocketing rate of teen pregnancies and its impact on the community is likely to be a subject of interest at the Latina Health Summit at Denver's Mi Casa Resource Center for Women on October 27.
The Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR) and sponsor of the summit employs a broad range of approaches to address the issue, says Executive Director Jacinta Montoya.
"The Latino community is deeply concerned about teen birth rates, the root causes of teen pregnancy, and the challenges that face teen parents," Montoya explains. "It's safe to say that most Latino families are affected by teen pregnancy and parenting at some level."
As a reproductive justice organization, COLOR works to support the right of young women to parent their children and to have adequate support to do so. And that can mean opposing messages and attitudes that vilify young mothers.
But that isn't to suggest that COLOR accepts teen pregnancy as an inevitability.
"The reproductive justice frame also means that we work to address the root causes of Latina teen pregnancy, including lack of access to preventative health care services, lack of access to higher education and employment opportunities, punitive immigration policies, and attitudes that devalue young women and their leadership," says Montoya.
"The Latina teen birth rate is a problem because many young Latinas see few other life options other than becoming a wife and mother," Montoya continues. Since many young Latinas do not have access to higher education or gainful employment options, they see pregnancy and marriage as the only life path available to them.
Montoya believes that the Latina teen birth rate is a reflection of the lack of sexuality education that is comprehensive, medically accurate, and evidence-based.
Casillas agreed that relevancy is a key component to preventing adolescent Latina pregnancies.
"Integrating cultural competency principles into programs and services is a critical way to enhance the quality of services for Latino youth and families," says Casillas.
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The new guidelines announced in September 2006 are a radical departure from previous testing recommendations. The CDC now urges routine HIV testing for all Americans between 13 and 64 as a routine part of their health care with a test performed unless the patient specifically refuses.
A quarter of a million Americans have undiagnosed HIV infections. The CDC estimates that two-thirds of the approximately 40,000 new cases each year in the U.S. occur in people who are unaware of their infection.
The study found "significant legal barriers" in implementing the CDC's advice:
Because of state requirements for specific consent to HIV testing, written consent to testing, and disclosure of specific information during pretest counseling or the informed consent process, the majority of states would need to amend their laws to permit routine HIV testing. For example, states that require disclosures would need either to eliminate those disclosures or make them recommendations, rather than requirements. However, our findings show that legislatures have not made the legal changes necessary to facilitate more routine HIV testing, despite strong public health recommendations to do so. In fact, the trend in states that have amended their laws since 2004 has been to reaffirm requirements for pretest counseling and consent, even, in some instances, while acknowledging the recommendations for more routine testing.
Even states without HIV testing statutes may face legal barriers to implementing the CDC's recommendations for routine HIV testing. Based on case law, many states use a "reasonable patient" standard for informed consent to medical treatment; physicians must disclose what a patient with ordinary reason and intelligence would want to know in making a medical decision. Because policy has recommended specific consent to HIV testing after pretest counseling and due to continued stigma surrounding HIV, it is likely that the "reasonable patient" standard would require more information about HIV testing than is currently contemplated under the CDC's recommendations. It may take time-and education efforts-to change public perceptions and to make routine testing acceptable.
According to the researchers, HIV/AIDS advocates raised concerns that mandatory testing without pretest counseling and written consent would reduce opportunities to educate patients about the disease and its risk factors. As well, people with HIV continue to experience discrimination, social isolation, and stigma which affects patients' willingness to undergo testing.
The study concludes that while increasing HIV testing is an important goal, the CDC's new recommendations may actually hinder future testing by at-risk individuals and those who have never had a test because of the de-emphasis on pretest counseling and disclosures which have been clinically proven to decrease both high-risk behaviors and the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases.
Besides Colorado, the following states were identified by the public health researcher and lawyer Leslie Wolfe at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UC San Francisco as being at odds with the CDC's proposal:
AL, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, IL, IN, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MS, MT, NE, NH, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, TX, VA, WA, WV, WI.
Wolfe cautions that the non-compliant states are a "moving target" since some are currently reviewing their consent and information disclosure laws in an attempt to align with the non-binding CDC recommendations.
]]>Researchers for the Guttmacher Institute and World Health Organization analyzed abortion trends from 1995-2003 among nations that allow and those that prohibit the procedure.
While the study found that abortions decreased from 46 million to 42 million in the nine year time period, 84 percent were performed in developing countries that were more likely to have laws banning abortion and less access to contraceptives and comprehensive sex education. One in five pregnancies are terminated worldwide annually.
The high rates in Africa and Latin America were attributed to abortion bans not serving as a deterrent and family planning funding restricted to abstinence programs. Asia's rate is high because of the high number in China and its one child policy.
In regions, where contraceptive access has increased markedly in the last few years, such as Eastern Europe, the abortion rate declined 50 percent.
A spokesman for an anti-abortion group complained in a New York Times article that the figures were subject to other interpretations.
The longitudinal study's global results could have implications in our own backyard.
As Colorado Confidential reported in August, an El Paso county-based conservative group has proposed a state constitutional amendment to ban abortion and inhibit family planning access under the guise of conveying personhood to fertilized eggs. Supporters are currently gathering the required 76,000 signatures to get the ballot measure before voters next year.
That war of words is expected to get heated and the rhetorical flourishes colorful.
Reports, like this one, will be parsed by supporters and opponents of the amendment alike to prove their points or dismiss the researchers' findings.
And once again, that puts Colorado firmly at ground zero between conservative and liberal factions battling over reproductive freedom.
The amendment fight -- that's already under consideration by the Colorado Supreme Court -- is also in the midst of the important 2008 election year where several state, local and federal campaigns are likely to hinge on conservative "values voters," an electorate bloc for whom criminalizing certain social behaviors, like abortion, is a sure-fire election day motivator.
The case has been expedited and a decision is expected from the court soon.
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