Opponents of Colorado’s latest Personhood initiative, Amendment 67, claim, in media reports, that their measure isn’t about banning abortion.
Multiple reporters have pushed back, pointing out that the Personhood-USA-backed initiative is actually another iteration of failed personhood amendments, aimed at outlawing all abortion and common forms of birth control.
But local reporting hasn’t explained in sufficient detail that this year’s amendment is unique nationally in subjecting pregnant women to harassment and prosecution from law enforcement officials.
Under Amendment 67, pregnant women could face arrest for everything from choosing abortion to driving without wearing a seat belt, as explained to me by Lynn Paltrow, director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, who was in Colorado last month to campaign against Amendment 67.
Paltrow presented a series of slides during a presentation with the text of common criminal statutes in Colorado: murder, manslaughter, vehicular homicide, reckless endangerment.
She replaced the words “person” or “child” with “unborn human being.”
For example, you commit murder in Colorado if you intend “to cause the death of another person.” If “person” becomes “unborn child,” then abortion becomes murder, Paltrow said.
Paltrow showed a slide of Colorado’s child abuse statute, inserted “unborn human being” into the statute’s wording, and explained how the law, as changed under Amendment 67, could be used to investigate, prosecute, and arrest a pregnant women believed to have put her “unborn child” at risk.
“What they are asking the citizens of Colorado to do is put in place a set of laws that begins by saying, ‘We believe a woman who has an abortion is guilty of first degree murder and deserves either life in prison or the death penalty.’ There are no exceptions.”
“Anything that a woman does that someone later believes she shouldn’t have done becomes evidence of recklessness,” she continued. “Standing on a ladder. Painting your nursery at six-months pregnant and falling off. Skiing while pregnant. Driving without wearing a seat belt. Not obeying a doctor’s advice to get bed rest. Child abuse becomes fertilized-egg abuse.”
Paltrow, who goes into more detail about Amendment 67 here, says she sympathizes with Heather Surovic, a proponent of the measure, who was eight-months pregnant when a drunk driver slammed into her car. She lost her unborn child, which she’d named “Brady.”
“The irony is, if this amendment in Brady’s memory succeeded, what Brady’s memory would really be doing is creating a law that could have had his mother arrested even if she’d done absolutely nothing wrong or reckless,” said Paltrow, citing a New York case in which a pregnant woman was convicted of manslaughter of her own child after being in a car accident. “What the Brady Amendment would do is make mothers absolutely vulnerable to arrest themselves.”
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Jason, I think you want the first word to be "proponents"
Jason Personhood, Udall shill, has another personhood story up.
Still can't come up with anything Udall did in the last 6 years?
ok troll, can you deny anything in his post isn't true? Where are your facts? Why did gardner flipflop on this issue? How is your rash?
This is about Amendment 67, which should be defeated for all the reasons above, not the Senate race.
No on 67
What Jason presents about the intentions of the proponents of the personhood amendment is absolutely correct and everyone on all sides knows it. The opposition of personhood proponents to Colorado's legislation to allow civil lawsuits for the unlawful termination of pregnancy, focusing on the rights of the pregnant woman to maintain a wanted pregnancy rather than the personhood of the fertilized egg, is further proof of that. This legislation addresses violence against a pregnant woman, for instance an assault, that results in a miscarriage, while specifically stating that it is not meant to be construed as conferring personhood on the unborn child.
If personhood is not really aimed at outlawing abortion, why the vehement opposition to legislation that recognizes the right of a woman to maintain a pregnancy without unwanted interference? Only because it does not confer personhood and their real goal is to declare every fertilized egg a person which would clearly make all abortion murder.
The personhood amendment proponents know this perfectly well even as they argue otherwise. No wonder so many of them are undisturbed by Gardner's twists and turns. They simply assume he is lying just as they are and that's OK because they believe the ends justify dishonest means.
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/05/06/colorado-bill-allow-civil-lawsuits-unlawful-termination-pregnancy/
I should have said that results in the death of the unborn child, not only via miscarriage. It's explained clearly in the linked article. Don't know why the odd spacing. Can't figure out why that happens sometimes.
It also means that a woman could be charged with child abuse for eating the wrong breakfast cereal or for failing to take vitamins or any other little thing, like having sex while pregnant, even if her husband demands it and he is the head of household.