March 24, 2014 01:03 PM UTC

Gardner's Personhood Flip-Flop: The Story Continues

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• by: Colorado Pols

Republican Senate candidate Cory Gardner was obviously hoping that his flip-flop on the "Personhood" issue would be a minor blip on the campaign radar — hence the Friday afternoon surprise — but things haven't quite worked out that way. As FOX 31's Eli Stokols reports, Friday's news-dump is still a story on Monday:

On Monday, Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall’s campaign responded to Gardner’s allegation to the Denver Post that the Udall team was”distorting his record” on the issue by pointing to the lawmaker’s record itself, noting that the Republican has co-sponsored legislation to ban abortion without exceptions for rape and incest as a member of the Colorado legislature and the U.S. Congress.

“Once again, Congressman Gardner is trying to run from his long record of turning his back on Colorado women,” the Udall campaign said in a press release. “Despite Gardner’s crocodile tears, the fact remains that the 2007 Colorado abortion ban that bears his name banned abortion even in cases of rape and incest.”

“And for the past two years Gardner cosponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would ban abortions even in cases of rape and incest, and outlaw common forms of birth control. The only person not being honest with Colorado voters is Cory Gardner.”

In 2007, Gardner, then a state representative, sponsored SB 143, which sought to outlaw all abortions with the exception of cases that is “designed to protect the death of a pregnant mother, if the physician makes reasonable medical efforts under the circumstances to preserve both the life of the mother and the life of her unborn child in a manner consistent with conventional medical practice.”

And in 2012 and 2013 as a member of Congress, Gardner supported The Life Begins at Conception Act, a federal attempt to establish personhood. [Pols emphasis]

Those last two sentences above are a key point in Gardner's Personhood flip-flop. As we wrote over the weekend, Gardner's claim to have "re-thought" the issue of Personhood in 2010 is not supported by his own record. If Gardner really did re-think his stance on Personhood four years ago, he certainly kept it to himself while he was co-sponsoring legislation such as "The Life Begins at Conception Act," which is a fundamental part of the Personhood idea.