Personhood Colorado: Fetuses Are Like Slaves

On Tuesday, Personhood Colorado unveiled its campaign strategy for Amendment 62, the proposed state constitutional amendment that would grant full legal rights to zygotes:

Backers of a ballot initiative asking Colorado voters to essentially ban abortion in the state announced their campaign strategy yesterday, a strategy that includes comparing fetuses to slaves.

Members of Personhood Colorado unveiled their first campaign advertisement at a news conference at the Capitol. The radio ad, which will be aired in the coming days, compares the rights of fetuses to American slaves.

It features a fictitious slave by the name of George Stevens who says he fought to end the practice of declaring people as property.

"I fought so all slaves would be recognized as persons, not property, and we won," says Stevens in the radio spot, as patriotic war music plays in the background. "But today in Colorado there are sill people called property -- children -- just like I was. And that America you thought you wouldn't recognize is all around you, and these children are being killed."

The ad asks voters this November to vote "yes" on Amendment 62 because the measure declares unborn children persons, not property.

"And that's the America I fought for," concludes the ad.

Ari Armstrong and I will have more to say on this comparison in our revised policy paper on "personhood" -- please pledge! For now, let me say that Amendment 62 would make women the slaves of zygotes: they would be required to sacrifice their lives, their health, their plans, their goals to a tiny clump of cells. That's wrong, and any person who values human life ought to oppose it.