Yes, Buck's Policies Would 'Ban Common Forms of Birth Control'

As reported by Michael Sandoval for National Review Online, Ken Buck's campaign has responded to Senator Bennet's attack ad. It's not clear to me who wrote the text that Sandoval quotes; it uses first-person pronouns while referring to "Ken Buck" in the third-person. Nevertheless, I will consider the text to constitute Buck's approved policy statement.

Neither Sandoval nor Buck deny that Buck wants to ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest. What is at issue is Buck's views on birth control. Here is the relevant text from Sandoval's article:

'Buck wants to ban common forms of birth control.'

This is a lie. It is difficult to understand where this lie comes from. It may come from Ken's position that life begins at conception. However, the 'common forms of birth control' -- presumably, condoms for men and oral contraceptive pills for women -- do not result in killing a fertilized egg. I am not a doctor, but a Google search brought up this hit about how female oral contraceptives work:

http://womenshealth.about.com/od/thepill/f/howpillworks.htm

Buck is either disingenuous on the issue or else profoundly confused.

As I have reported, Buck endorsed the "personhood" measure, now slated as Amendment 62 for this fall's ballot.

My source was the "Christian Family Alliance of Colorado," which reports on its web page that Buck supports the "personhood" initiative. If for some reason this is mistaken, the Buck should correct the record immediately. I personally would be thrilled to hear that Buck in fact denounces rather than endorses Amendment 62; unfortunately, I don't think that's actually the case.

Nobody thinks Amendment 62 would ban condoms; that's just a diversion. However, according to the sponsors of Amendment 62, the measure certainly would ban any form of birth control that could damage a zygote, and the birth control pill certainly qualifies, as I have noted. Indeed, the pill that my wife took until recently says on its prescription information that it can act by "making it difficult for a fertilized egg to attach to the lining of the womb (implantation)."

Indeed, if we look at the very citation provided by Buck's campaign, it states that, with the pill, "The lining of the uterus is also affected in a way that prevents fertilized eggs from implanting into the wall of the uterus."

Assuming that Buck in fact endorses Amendment 62, then he in fact wants to ban the birth control pill, IUD, and "morning after" drugs. Either that, or Buck lacks the integrity to own up to the consequences of his endorsements. Which is it, Ken?

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Policy Paper: The 'Personhood' Movement Is Anti-Life

From www.seculargovernment.us/a62.shtml:

The Coalition for Secular Government is pleased to announce the release of its policy paper on the "personhood" movement by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh (Ph.D): The 'Personhood' Movement Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters that Rights Begin at Birth, Not Conception (PDF or HTML).

The 'Personhood' Movement Is Anti-Life
Why It Matters that Rights Begin at Birth, Not Conception

by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh, Ph.D.

A policy paper written for the Coalition for Secular Government (www.SecularGovernment.us)

Published on August 31, 2010

Formats: HTML or PDF

Contents

• Introduction
  
• The 'Personhood' Movement
  
  • "Personhood" and the Abortion Debate
    
  • Colorado Campaigns
    
  • Campaigns in Other States
• The Destructive Effects of 'Personhood'
  
  • A Legal Quagmire
    
  • Harsh Legal Penalties
    
  • Bans of Elective Abortions
    
  • Abortions to Protect a Woman's Health
    
  • Abortions for Rape, Incest, and Fetal Deformity
    
  • Bans of Common Birth Control Methods
    
  • Bans of Common Fertility Treatments
    
  • Bans of Embryonic Stem-Cell Research
    
  • Amendment 62 Is Anti-Life
  
  
• Individual Rights and Abortion
  
  • The Compromise of Roe v. Wade
    
  • Today's "Pro-Choice" Rhetoric
    
  • The Core Arguments for "Personhood" Laws
    
  • Rights in Pregnancy
• The Morality of Abortion
  
• 'Personhood' and the Separation of Church and State
  
• Amendment 62 Is Not a 'Message'
  
• Notes

From the Introduction

Amendment 62, set to appear on Colorado's 2010 ballot, seeks to legally establish personhood from the moment of conception, granting a fertilized egg (or zygote) full legal rights in the state's constitution. Following in the footsteps of 2008's Amendment 48, Amendment 62 is the spearhead of a national campaign to outlaw abortion and other practices that could harm a zygote, embryo, or fetus.

If fully implemented, Amendment 62 would profoundly and adversely impact the lives of sexually-active couples, couples seeking children, pregnant women and their partners, doctors, and medical researchers. It would subject them to severe legal restrictions, police controls, and in many cases protracted court battles and criminal punishments.

Amendment 62 would outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, terminally deformed fetuses, and danger to the woman's health. It would prohibit doctors from performing abortions except perhaps in some cases to save the life of the woman, thereby endangering the lives and health of many women. In conjunction with existing statutes, Amendment 62 would subject women and their doctors to first-degree murder charges for willfully terminating a pregnancy, with the required punishment of life in prison or the death penalty.

The impact of Amendment 62 would extend far beyond abortion into the personal corners of every couple's reproductive life. It would outlaw many forms of birth control, including the pill, IUD, and "morning after" drugs. It would require criminal investigation of any miscarriages deemed suspicious. It would ban potentially life-saving embryonic stem-cell research and common fertility treatments.

Amendment 62 rests on the absurd premise that a newly fertilized zygote is a full human person with an absolute right to biological life-support from a woman--regardless of her wishes and whatever the cost to her. The biological facts of pregnancy, in conjunction with an objective theory of rights, support a different view, namely that personhood and rights begin at birth. Colorado law should reflect those facts, not the Bible verses so often quoted (and creatively interpreted) by advocates of Amendment 62 and other "personhood" measures.

About the Authors

Ari Armstrong publishes Free Colorado and co-authors a column for Western Colorado's Grand Junction Free Press. He is the author of Values of Harry Potter: Lessons for Muggles, a book exploring the heroic fight for life-promoting values in the Potter novels.

Diana Hsieh founded the Coalition for Secular Government in 2008. She earned her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is currently working on a book on Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, based on her series of podcasts at ExploreAtlasShrugged.com. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com.

Read The 'Personhood' Movement Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters that Rights Begin at Birth, Not Conception (PDF or HTML).

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LTE: Vote No on Amendment 62

The Loveland Reporter Herald recently published an excellent LTE against Amendment 62:

Dear Editor,

I oppose, and encourage other voters to oppose, the ballot initiative coming in November which would amend the Colorado Constitution to extend the concept 'person' to every human being, including potential humans during biological development.

Were the amendment, Amendment 62, to pass and be enforced abortions would be punishable as first-degree murder, and birth control medication that prevents implantation of a fertilized egg would be outlawed. Moreover, viable forms of in-vitro fertilization would needlessly be banned in Colorado. This proposed amendment is a viscous attack by the theocrats of the religious right, and an unequivocal threat to the life, liberty, health, and happiness of all men and women in Colorado.

In 2008 Coloradoans recognized that government must be secular and resoundingly stood up to these religious theocrats over a similar, but less comprehensive, proposal: Amendment 48. I urge all Colorado voters who care about the proper moral role of government to be even more comprehensive in their rejection of this new attack on individual rights.

William Danielson
Loveland, CO

Thank you, William Danielson, for speaking out against Amendment 62!

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Catholic Theocracy

At first, I thought this video -- which calls for restricting the vote to faithful Catholics and installing a Catholic monarch -- must be satire. However, Real Catholic TV is genuine. Watch it for yourself... and be amazed.



Notably, Real Catholic TV posted a non-clarifying clarification here.

Quite often, I've heard from my fellow atheists that talk of theocracy in America is absurd. Is it? I think not, and here's why:

• Much grassroots political activism is driven by religious dogma today, as we've seen up close and personal in Colorado. For example, every group pushing for Colorado's "personhood" amendment is deeply religious: Colorado Right to Life "commits to never compromise on God’s law, 'Do not murder.'" Personhood USA seeks to "honor the Lord Jesus Christ with our lives and actions," and they do so by acting as "missionaries to preborn children."
  
• Fundamentalist Christians and their mouthpieces like the American Family Association claim that America was founded as a Christian nation and that the Bible is the foundation for our laws. They do that, even though the Constitution is a thoroughly secular document, even though the 1797 Treaty with Tropoli denied that the US was a Christian nation, and so on. Their strategy of evasion seems to be effective. A 2007 USA Today article reports that "55% [of Americans] believe erroneously that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation." (75% of evangelicals and Republicans thought so.)
  
• A slew of well-funded and deeply-motivated Christian groups actively seek to reform America's laws in keeping with the will of God. So the basic mission of Concerned Women for America, for example, is to "bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy."

So should we dismiss a call for Catholic theocracy as too looney to take seriously? I think not. For too many Christians, the only problem with it is that the culture must be forced to be thoroughly Christian too... oh, and they would vastly prefer their sect to be in power. That's hardly comforting.

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Why Sam Alexander is Wrong on 'Personhood'

In an August 15 letter to the Denver Post, Sam Alexander offers the following argument in favor of Amendment 62, the "personhood" measure that will appear on November's ballot:

As an obstetrician/gynecologist and reproductive endocrinologist, I can assure [Ed] Quillen [see his article] that human development -- from the embryo to the fetus, infant, child and adult stages -- is an uninterrupted continuum; a human being is always present. We do not value human beings based upon functional capacity, but upon the intrinsic properties which make us human. Consequently, all human beings in a liberal democracy should be treated with the respect due a person, with full rights and dignity.

Alexander ignores two fundamental facts. First, a zygote is a clump of largely-undifferentiated cells without any human organs or capacities. Second, until birth, a zygote, embryo, or fetus is wholly contained within the woman's body and utterly dependent on her body for sustenance. Thus, while there is no doubt a "continuum" of development from fertilization through adulthood, an individual person with legal rights emerges at birth. (Until that point, the law properly supports a woman's desire to protect her fetus from outside aggression, as an extension of her body.) For the more complete case, read the paper by Diana Hsieh and me (or the soon-to-be released updated version of the paper).

I do think it's worth pointing out the obvious logical fallacies that Alexander commits in his letter.

Consider the following statements: "Stubble grows into a beard; therefore, stubble is a beard." "An acorn grows into an oak tree; therefore, an acorn is an oak tree." "A caterpillar develops into a butterfly; therefore, a caterpillar is a butterfly." "An adult human develops into a corpse; therefore, an adult human is a corpse."

Like Alexander's statement, these are all examples of the logical fallacy known as the "argument of the beard" or the "continuum fallacy." Something can in an "uninterrupted continuum" develop into something else and yet be become a basically different thing. That is precisely what happens when an egg is fertilized and develops into a born infant. The obvious fact that a zygote (in the proper environment) develops into a born infant -- a person -- does not imply that a zygote is a person.

Alexander's second logical fallacy is an equivocation on the term "human being." The cited paper explains:

In fact, the advocates of Amendment 48 [now Amendment 62] depend on an equivocation on “human being” to make their case. A fertilized egg is human, in the sense that it contains human DNA. It is also a “being,” in the sense that it is an entity. ...[T]he fact that an embryo is biologically a human entity is not grounds for claiming that it's a human person with a right to life. Calling a fertilized egg a “human being” is word-play intended to obscure the vast biological differences between a fertilized egg traveling down a woman's fallopian tube and a born infant sleeping in a crib.

Finally, Alexander appeals to his own authority, when in fact his expertise shed no light whatsoever on the (faulty) conclusions he draws.

Given the obviously deficient arguments Alexander offers in his letter, might I suppose that he has underlying motives for endorsing "personhood" that he did not mention in the letter?

This post was originally published on Ari Armstrong's blog.

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Ed Quillen on the Slavery Argument

Ed Quillen commented on the analogy between zygotes and slaves drawn by "personhood" advocates toward the end of his recent Denver Post op-ed on Amendment 62:

If you ponder those possibilities and their ramifications, then it seems about four kinds of weird that the supporters of Amendment 62, an outfit called Personhood Colorado, bring up slavery in their marketing.

They've run a radio ad featuring a fictitious American slave, telling us that "I was held as property as a child. Even before my birth I was called a slave in an America you wouldn't recognize. But folks like you helped me escape North to freedom and in 1864, I joined the infantry to fight for my country. I fought so all slaves would be recognized as persons, not property. And we won . . . . This November, vote 'yes' on Amendment 62. Amendment 62 declares unborn children persons, not property. And that's the America I fought for."

But if Personhood Colorado gets its way, every woman of child-bearing age would have to be supervised lest she injure the rights of the person she may or may not be gestating. Every home miscarriage would have to be investigated by the coroner, for it's his legal duty to look into all deaths of persons that do not occur under medical supervision.

In other words, Colorado women would be required to be reproductive vessels, their lives limited and monitored, all in the guise of protecting "unborn persons." And that sounds a lot like slavery.

Indeed it does.

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Colorado Senate Candidate Ken Buck on Abortion

Much to my dismay and disgust, Colorado's two Republican candidates for Senate, Jane Norton and Ken Buck, have endorsed Colorado's 2010 "personhood" amendment, a.k.a Amendment 62. That proposed amendment would grant full legal rights to zygotes from the moment of fertilization.

As Ari Armstrong and I explained in our soon-to-be-updated 2008 policy paper -- Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person -- this "personhood for zygotes" amendment would have dire legal consequences if passed and enforced. It would require abortions to be punished as first-degree murders, except perhaps to save the woman's life. It would ban any form of birth control that might sometimes prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus -- including the birth control pill. And it would ban viable forms in vitro fertilization because the process usually creates more fertilized eggs than can be safely implanted in the womb. In short, the measure poses a grave threat to the life, liberty, health, and happiness of the women and men of Colorado.

Many Republicans in Colorado seem to be evading the plain meaning of the amendment. As Ari Armstrong explains, they claim to support it, while denying that it's anything more than a symbolic gesture. So where do the Ken Buck and Jane Norton stand?

Ari Armstrong has discussed Jane Norton's anti-abortion views here. She's in favor of Amendment 62, because she believes that "life begins at conception." Of course, when "life" begins is not relevant: my pancreas is alive -- and human. The question is when rights begin -- and that happens at birth. Moreover, Norton would allow abortions in cases of rape and incest, even though such abortions would violate the supposed rights of the zygote or fetus just as much as any other abortion.

Even more than Norton, Ken Buck seems to endorse "personhood for zygotes" wholeheartedly. Via the Colorado Independent, we find Buck's basic statement of his views:

QUESTION: How do you feel about abortion? Are you for abortion, against abortion, are you for it? In what instances would you allow for abortion?

BUCK: I am pro-life, and I'll answer the next question. I don't believe in the exceptions of rape or incest. I believe that the only exception, I guess, is life of the mother. And that is only if it's truly life of the mother.

To me, you can't say you're pro-life and say -- if there is, and it's a very rare situation where one life would have to cease for the other life to exist. But in that very rare situation, we may have to take the life of the child to save the life of the mother.

In that rare situation, I am in favor of that exception. But other than that I have no exceptions in my position.

So if the life of a pregnant woman is merely in peril, as opposed to facing certain death, then Ken Buck would deny her an abortion, until perhaps too late. Or if the pregnant woman's health would be permanently ruined, such that she'd be disabled for life, Ken Buck would deny her an abortion.

Ken Buck seeks to force women to sacrifice their lives, their health, their dreams, their values to a tiny clump of cells without any human qualities except DNA.

That's not "pro-life" ... it's frightfully anti-life. And if it's not opposed on moral grounds, people like Ken Buck will eventually have their way.

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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.

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"Pro-life" Atheist Arguments Against Abortion are Fallacious

A reader of Politics Without God calls himself a "pro-life atheist," and has commented that "there are plenty of atheist pro-lifers who oppose abortion on the basis of science and reason." But such arguments against abortion are just as irrational as those of religious "pro-lifers."

The "pro-life" atheist position is irrational because it does not adhere to the law of identity and it misapplies the concept of rights.

By the Law of Identity, a Human Being and Embryo Are Not the Same Thing

The "pro-life" atheist assertion that "abortion is wrong because it kills an innocent human being" violates the law of identity, which Ayn Rand explains as: "To exist is to be something....it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes."

What is a human being? A common secular dictionary definition defines human as: "of, belonging to, or typical of man (Homo sapiens)... [and] having or showing qualities, as rationality or fallibility, viewed as distinctive of people."

Ayn Rand defines a human being as a living biological being with the distinctive characteristic of a kind of "consciousness able to abstract, to form concepts, to apprehend reality by a process of reason... [A human] is a rational animal." Ayn Rand further explains that reason is a human's fundamental means of survival, it is how an individual forms values and it must be exercised by one's own volition. This is the essence of the human being, qua human (despite when things go wrong, like head injuries, birth defects, Alzheimer's disease).

To further elucidate the distinctiveness of the human being, it is through this uniquely human process of reason that knowledge about reality is not only sought, but communicated to others across time. We don't have to wake up in the morning, discover electricity, manufacture a coffee pot, and discover how to cultivate and harvest foods to make fresh hot coffee. In contrast, every generation of animal, such as a wolf or squirrel, repeats the same cycles of reproducing, obtaining food and fighting predators according to the natures of their species -- by the law of identity.

What is an embryo? In the same vein, an embryo is not a human being. While an embryo possesses DNA just like the plant Botrychium lunaria, the quality of having DNA is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to meet the identity of a human being. An embryo, beginning with one cell containing a complete set of human DNA then developing into a fetus, has its own characteristic identity, like every other entity in the universe.

The distinctive and essential characteristics of an embryo are that it is potential human life, it is physiologically attached to the human mother, and it undergoes embryological cell division and differentiation according to DNA "instructions." Its survival and growth are entirely passive and autonomic, and completely dependent upon the biological viability of the mother it is attached to. It has not yet entered the world as an autonomous, singular, separate entity.

An infant is a human being and so is a pregnant woman. But once it is born, even as a day-old infant, he is forced to interact with the world at large and begins the process of developing a capacity of reason that will enable him to survive -- as human qua human. The infant begins with perceptual-level reasoning--he wails and screams when perceiving hunger or a wet diaper. In contrast, an embryo functions entirely autonomically, passively receiving nutrients via the umbilical cord attached to the placenta. A pregnant woman, whose faculty of reason has developed beyond the infantile perceptual level, has learned that she can meet her need for pickles and ice cream by going to the store. A different woman with an unwanted pregnancy decides that having a baby is not in her best interest according to the values she holds by choice, by reason.

The atheist "pro-lifer" is dispensing with the law of identity which distinguishes a human being from an embryo when he says: "..it is ludicrous to then go on to say that 'it is the woman's choice' (to have an abortion). It is as ludicrous as saying that you believe slavery is wrong, but that people should still have the choice whether they buy a slave or not. Science tells us that abortion kills a human being."

This statement muddles two different entities. Science and the law of identity tell us that a slave and a pregnant woman are both human beings -- but an embryo is not; it is an entity called "a potential human being."

A Human Being Has Rights, an Embryo Does Not

Since I have established by the axiomatic law of identity that an embryo is not a human being, an embryo does not have the "inalienable right to life" written in our Constitution by the Founding Fathers, as some "pro-life" atheists claim. This becomes clear when you integrate the law of identity with a proper application of the concept of rights.

Ayn Rand succinctly clarifies what the right to life is:

"right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life...Individualism regards man--every man--as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.

Because of the law of identity, there is a distinct difference between a born human being and an embryo. They are as distinctively unique by identity as a brain cell (with its full complement of human DNA) is to a malaria-transmitting species of the Anopheles mosquito (also with a full complement of its DNA).

The inescapable truth is that human rights apply only to humans, qua humans, not to embryos---anymore than rights apply to Anopheles.

Simply put, "[an] embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn)."

So there is no difference between religious and atheist (aka "scientific") positions against abortion. Both dismiss with the law of identity and erroneously claim that an embryo is a human being with a right to life.

One is Anti-Abortion Only By Accepting the Moral Code of Altruism

"The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value."

Atheist anti-abortionists are just as altruistically-minded as religious anti-abortionists: both uphold the idea that a woman who does not want to keep a pregnancy must do so anyway, despite her right to exist for her own sake. In order for the atheist anti-abortionist to say an embryo has an "inalienable right to life," the human mother must surrender her rights for the duration of the pregnancy with complete disregard for her own life, values, and rational self-interest.

But in a free society, individual rights do not just come and go or float about. They are not temporary depending upon a medical condition. A woman doesn't suspend her right to life and self-determination when becoming pregnant! In a free society, she must not be compelled to surrender to an imposed morality of altruism and self-sacrifice against her will because of pregnancy. Even a born human in a vegetative state retains the right to life (even though he requires a proxy spokesperson to act in his or her behalf).

In a repressive anti-abortion society, a woman keeps her status as a human being with that society's cultural rules only as long as she is not pregnant; but loses that status like a sacrificial animal when she's pregnant. If you extend the illogical, then men should lose their rights every time they have sex, because that could possibly cause a pregnancy (even if birth control is used, because of course birth control sometimes fails).

The Anti-Abortion Position Cannot Resolve the Inherent Conflict of Altruism

Some anti-abortion legislation deigns to permit abortion "if the life of the mother is threatened." Well, just how far does that go? On the brink of death when CPR and resuscitation are required in the case of a complicated pregnancy? When the mother is bleeding out and needs multiple blood transfusions? When she's past the point of no return on full life-support?

The correct answer in a non-sacrificial society is: Abortion should be allowed when the woman decides as a volitional human what constitutes a threat to her life, her values, her existence as a rational being.

Never can the "interests" of a fetus override the right to life and liberty of a born human. Only by the morality of altruism and the use of force can a society allow an embryo to hijack a woman's uterus and compel her to sacrifice her life and values to ensure the completion of a pregnancy. Only under dictatorial laws where individual rights do not prevail (such as in theocratic countries like Saudi Arabia or communist societies like Soviet-era Romania, for example, is a woman a fleeting human being.

The Right to Abortion is Absolute Because the Law of Identity and Individual Rights are Absolute

At all times, from the point of birth, a woman retains the right to life and the right to her body. At all times, from the point of birth, the woman's right to life is enduring, and does not fluctuate according to her fertility status.

The choice to retain a pregnancy is foremost predicated upon a woman's consent to incubate potential life. And it is nobody's right -- atheist or religious -- to deny her this choice.

By the law of identity; by the morality of individualism as against altruism; by the science of reason and individual rights, the right to abortion must not be abrogated.

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Pledge for an Updated Policy Paper on Colorado's "Personhood" Amendment

Once again, the religious right is launching a massive assault on reproductive rights in Colorado and other states. Help the Coalition for Secular Government fight back by pledging for an updated policy paper showing that "personhood" for zygotes is destructive to human life!

In 2008, the theocrats of the religious right gathered the requisite signatures to put a "personhood" amendment on Colorado's ballot. Known as Amendment 48, this proposed amendment to the state constitution sought to define a fertilized egg as a person with full legal rights in the Colorado constitution. Amendment 48 was defeated resoundingly with 73% against and 27% in favor.

Unfortunately, the crusade for "personhood" did not perish with Amendment 48. Instead, the crusaders went national, expanding the activity of Personhood USA to over 30 states. They're back in Colorado for the 2010 election with Amendment 62, a slightly modified version of Amendment 48.

Colorado's Amendment 62 would grant full legal rights to zygotes from the moment of fertilization. It proposes:

An amendment to the Colorado Constitution applying the term 'person' as used in those provisions of the Colorado Constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice and due process of law, to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.

If passed and enforced, the measure would require abortions to be punished as first-degree murders, except perhaps to save the woman's life. It would ban any form of birth control that might sometimes prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus -- including the birth control pill. And it would ban viable forms in vitro fertilization because the process usually creates more fertilized eggs than can be safely implanted in the womb. The measure poses a grave threat to the life, liberty, health, and happiness of the women and men of Colorado.

In 2008, the Coalition for Secular Government published a policy paper by Ari Armstrong and myself entitled Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person. We devoted countless hours to write, publish, and promote the paper. We're proud of the results of that work: our paper offered the only substantive moral critique of the proposed amendment and a detailed analysis of its effects.

Now Ari Armstrong and I need to update that policy paper for 2010's Amendment 62. We want the new paper to reflect the changes in the language of the amendment, as well as better address the arguments made in favor of "personhood." We'd like to discuss the worse political climate in Colorado, plus the spread of the "personhood" movement to other states. And once again, we'd like to promote the new paper via media releases, op-eds, and letters to the editor.

That work will be substantial: Ari and I expect the project to require two solid weeks of work from each of us. And we have other pressing demands on our time.

So we're asking you to contribute to the update of that policy paper by pledging your money in exchange for our work. We want to raise $2000 in pledges for the new policy paper -- by August 3rd at noon. In return, we promise to deliver the revised paper by August 31st, then promote it until the November election. If we raise less than that $2000 in pledges, we'll still revise the paper, but we'll scale back our efforts accordingly. If we raise more than that $2000 in pledges, we'll collect just $2000, pro-rating each pledge accordingly. Your pledge won't be due until we release the updated paper. That's because you're not pledging for effort but for results. If we don't release the paper for some reason, then you'll owe nothing.

If you want to stop the theocrats in Colorado and other states ... if you want to preserve our rights to abortion, birth control, and in vitro fertilization ... if you want to protect the health and lives of American women -- please pledge using the form below!

In the "Question or Comment" field, we'd love to hear why you're supporting our fight against the "personhood" movement. If you have questions or arguments that you'd like to see addressed in the updated policy paper, please include those too.



Most of all, thank you for your support!

Questions and Answers about Pledging

How much should I pledge?

That's entirely up to you. You should pledge whatever amount our efforts are worth to you, in light of your resources. Any pledge is welcome.

How can I know what positions and arguments policy paper will contain?

I'd recommend that you read the original version of the paper: Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person. We're proud of that work: we stand by all the claims and arguments in it. In addition, you can read CSG's summary of and publications on Amendment 48, as well our recent blog posts on Amendment 62.

Will anyone know that I've pledged?

Your name, e-mail, pledge amount, and comment will not be published or otherwise shared with anyone outside CSG unless required by law.

What if I change my mind after I pledge?

If you wish to increase your pledge, you can always pledge more. Just submit another pledge to be added to your existing pledges. If you make a mistake in your pledge, you can e-mail me at diana@dianahsieh.com before August 3rd. If you want to back out of your pledge... well, I won't have any legal way of enforcing this contract, but if you welch on your bill, you're a schmuck!

When will I find out whether you've gathered enough pledges for the full revision?

The pledge drive ends at noon on August 3rd. Sometime that day, I'll e-mail everyone who pledged with the results, as well as post an announcement to Politics without God.

How do I pay?

You'll be able to pay via PayPal, or you can send a check or money order. I prefer PayPal, but paper methods are fine too. (I will collect the pledges, then split those funds evenly with Ari Armstrong.)

Will my pledge be tax-deductible?

No. The Coalition for Secular Government is a non-profit corporation in Colorado, but the paperwork required by the federal government for tax-exemption is simply too burdensome.

What if I'm not satisfied with the policy paper?

If the policy paper doesn't offer the value you expected, then we will void your pledge and refund any money paid. All that you have to do is e-mail me explaining why you're dissatisfied.

Why are you doing this?

Ari Armstrong and I have devoted much time and effort to battling the religious right, but we have many demands on our time. We want to make sure that others value the work that we're doing, and we want to be fairly paid for that work.

What do I do if I have some other question?

Please e-mail me at diana@dianahsieh.com. I'll update these questions to clarify as needed.

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Laura Bush Pro-Gay Marriage and Pro-Choice

Wow, I never expected that Laura Bush would support gay marriage and abortion rights:



Barbara Bush was pro-choice too. More details can be found in this 2005 Washington Post article: Women Closest to Bush Are Pro-Choice.

If we have to have another Bush in the White House -- and let's hope not, as they've been disasters on all fronts so far -- perhaps we should elect one of the women.

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By Endorsing Horrific 'Personhood' Measure, Republicans Court Defeat

[From Ari Armstrong's blog:] The following article originally was published May 28, 2010, by Grand Junction's Free Press.

By endorsing horrific 'personhood' measure, Republicans court defeat

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

All we can figure is that Colorado Republicans have a political death wish. What else can explain candidates like Scott McInnis and Jane Norton falling all over themselves to endorse the wildly unpopular, absurdly drafted, and life-damaging "personhood" measure headed for the ballot this fall?

Amendment 62, a slightly redrafted version of 2008's Amendment 48, would, if passed and fully enforced, ban all abortions, even in cases of risks to the woman's health, rape, incest, and fetal deformity. It would outlaw the birth control pill, the IUD, "morning after" medications, common fertility treatments, and some types of medical research.

It would subject women with suspicious miscarriages to possible criminal prosecution. It would require doctors to sacrifice the health of a woman to the survival of a zygote or fetus, which would inevitably result in the death of some women. It would require women to carry pregnancies to term against their wishes, by government force. [See details.]

And the sponsors of this nightmarish police-state proposal have the audacity to call it "pro-life." We can think of no other measure more harmful to the lives of actual people ever to gain ballot approval.

The measure may do better than the 27 percent of votes it gained last time. In 2008, Republicans were dispirited; this year they are energized. Voters, sick of big-spender George W. "Bailout" Bush and the shenanigans of state Republicans, decided to give the Democrats a chance. The Democrats proceeded to further muck up everything from health care to car manufacturing to foreign policy.

Moreover, the new measure replaces 2008 language about "the moment of fertilization" with a confusing line about "the beginning of biological development." While the measure's sponsors declare that still means fertilization, no doubt some voters will imagine otherwise. (We might as well call the proposal the Lawyer Enrichment Act for all the court disputes it would generate.)

Given that 73 percent of Colorado voters opposed the measure last time, obviously leading Republican candidates must endorse it now. Apparently Republicans think they can win in this state by alienating not only most Hispanic voters but most women (and their concerned male friends) as well.

Republicans seem to have forgotten that, in 2008, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin for her evangelical credentials hardly helped the ticket. Meanwhile, Republican Marilyn Musgrave lost her Congressional seat largely because of her obsession with faith-based politics, and Democrats successfully hammered various anti-choice Republicans running for state legislature.

Apparently this year Republicans in tough races fear the religious right in the primaries more than they fear mainstream voters in the general election. Such Republicans hope that people are so fed up with the Democrats that they'll momentarily forget about Republican craziness.

We already knew that Ken Buck (candidate for U.S. Senate) and Dan Maes (candidate for governor) endorsed "personhood." Your senior author heard McInnis, the frontrunner for governor, endorse the measure. The Daily Sentinel reported that Jane Norton, the leading Republican for U.S. Senate, also endorsed it. (Cinamon Watson, a spokesperson for Norton, confirmed the endorsement; see your younger author's report at http://tinyurl.com/62norton.)

We do not doubt that Maes and Buck are True Believers: they believe that God forbids abortion. (That is hardly the Christian consensus, and more importantly law should not be based on sectarian dogmas.) The endorsements of McInnis and Norton look remarkably like pandering to us. [See the update about Maes.]

Previously Norton called for abortion bans with possible exceptions for "rape, incest, and life of the mother," exceptions which at least in the first two cases clash with the "personhood" measure. For once we side with Colorado Right to Life and "question Jane Norton's sincerity on this issue."

Interestingly, a new survey from Public Policy Polling shows Senator Michael Bennet taking the lead for the first time. We wonder whether Bennet can sustain that lead by attacking Norton over "personhood." (The same outfit shows a tied governor's race.)

Scott McInnis's endorsement is more bizarre. As the Denver Post reported, back in 1998 McInnis was on the Advisory Board of Republicans for Choice. A letter to the Federal Election Commission shows McInnis's name on the group's letterhead. "Scott has no memory of that," according to his spokesperson.

True, McInnis also built an anti-choice voting record, earning a zero rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, for voting for such incremental measures as a partial-birth abortion ban except to save a woman's life. Yet we are supposed to believe that, in twelve years, McInnis has evolved from a pro-choice Republican to endorsing a measure outlawing the birth control pill as well as all abortions.

Frankly, we don't know which prospect is more frightening: that McInnis is pandering to the religious right, or that he really supports Amendment 62.

It remains to be seen whether, this year, Colorado Republicans will get away with threatening to impose dangerous sectarian dogmas by government force. But, over the long term, freedom-loving Coloradans aren't going to stand for it.

Linn Armstrong is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son, Ari, edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

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Oklahoma Anti-Abortion Gestapo

Oklahoma legislators have gone hog-wild in an orgy of anti-abortion bill-writing this session. Eight -- EIGHT bills interfering with a woman's right to abortion passed, four of which were vetoed by Oklahoma Governor, Brad Henry. But Religious Right lawmakers, including anti-abortion Democrats, succeeded in overriding three of the four vetoes.

Restricting Abortion Any Way They Can

The vetoed bills attack abortion rights in wide-ranging ways.

One bill requires a woman seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound within an hour of the procedure and have its findings explained to her. Another requires women seeking abortion services and the abortion providers to fill out a lengthy questionnaire and have its findings reported statistically on a state website. Another would ban wrongful life lawsuits against doctors who withhold information that could cause a woman to seek an abortion. These three vetoed bills were overridden by the Legislature. Of the 4th veto, legislators will not attempt an override a bill that would restrict insurance coverage of abortions (but sponsors may resurrect that bill next year).

The Anti-Abortion Gestapo

One particularly forcible bill would require women to have an ultrasound within one hour of requesting an abortion and be compelled to listen to a detailed description of the fetus. Even women impregnated by rape/incest would be included!

How is this to be accomplished, I wonder: by strapping down women's arms, holding their eyes open with toothpicks and placing headphones on at full volume? Fortunately, this coercive law is on hold due to a legal challenge by The Center for Reproductive Rights.

Public Health Hogwash

I'd like to highlight another overridden bill that disguises itself as a public health measure. Using classic public health vernacular, Sen. Clark Jolley, the Senate sponsor of the bill, said the bill is meant to understand why women are choosing to end their pregnancies. Tony Lauinger, state chairman for Oklahomans for Life, said the measure attempts to get accurate information about abortions performed in the state: "We are very appreciative of the pro-life action taken by the Senate. It is often said abortion is safe, legal and rare. This law seeks to gauge the accuracy of that statement." Sen. Jolley adds "This is about gathering data so we can prevent future need for women to face this choice."

If Oklahoma lawmakers were really concerned about public health priorities of their state, they need look no further than their own State Health Department which was assigned the task of prioritizing and solving Oklahoma's biggest public health problems. Because Oklahoma ranks 49th in the U.S. in health rankings, there is plenty of work to do.

Oklahoma's biggest health problems are heart disease (top in the nation), smoking (ranked 36th in the nation), obesity (ranked 6th), and infant health (higher infant mortality rate than national average). Preventing unintended pregnancies is also a goal, but that can be best accomplished by preventing pregnancy (you know, birth control--ever heard of it?) Reducing abortions is not going to affect pregnancy rates. The Anti-Abortion Gestapo can just stop crying alligator tears of concern for women's health. Women's health and rights are not their real concern, otherwise they would be worried about the death and complication rates resulting from abortions made illegal by their lawmaking.

Wear Yourself Out With the Questionnaire from HB 3284

Check out the questionnaire and imagine if you would like the government requiring you to answer the following deeply personal questions:

Reasons seeking abortion (hidden down in #15 of questionnaire); date of abortion; county performed; age of mother; marital status; race; years of education; state/country of residence; number of previous pregnancies; number of live births; miscarriages; induced abortions; gestational age of fetus based on last menstrual period; specific method of abortion; infant status resulting from abortion; was CPR of fetus undertaken; how long did aborted fetus survive; use of anesthesia to mother and fetus--what type and how administered; disposal of fetal tissue; reasons seeking an abortion (would it dramatically change the life of mother, interfere with her education, interfere with job, has other children, cannot afford another child, is unmarried, is a student, can't afford child care, can't meet basic needs of life, is unemployed, can't leave job to care for baby, would need new place to live, poor spousal support, spouse unemployed, on welfare, doesn't want to be single mother, relationship problems, uncertain of relationship to father, doesn't want to marry father, not in a relationship, may break up with father of child, mother feels she's too immature, spouse is abusive, mother doesn't want others to know she's had sex or is pregnant, husband wants abortion, health of mother or fetus at risk, parents want abortion, emotional health of mother at risk, wants child of different sex, life of mother at risk, pregnancy due to rape, pregnancy due to incest, mother declined to give reason); method of payment; insurance; fees collected; time fee collected; MD specialty; ultrasound used during or before or after; was ultrasound vaginal, abdominal or both; name of person performing ultrasound; referring physician; statute info provided to mother; did mother get printed materials; was gestational age 20 weeks or more and if so, was mother given appropriate info on the statutes pertaining to that.

So this extremely nosy public health approach to restricting abortion is lot of diversion from the real public health problems of Oklahoma. It is instead a method of intimidating doctors and patients into foregoing abortion (and thereby raising the statistics of unintended pregnancies, contrary to their own official public health priorities).

The only relevant questions an abortion provider should ask a patient are: "do you understand the procedure and its risks, and do you consent?" Kind of like Lasik surgery to improve your vision. Why a woman seeks an abortion is no government's or religious do-gooder's god-dammed business. The decision begins and ends with her.

The anti-choice Gestapo in Oklahoma wants to eliminate the right to abortion because of religious beliefs. But in reality it is the woman who has full rights over her body, her pregnancy, her soul and her being; and these rights cannot be overridden by a fetus.

So the nosy-Ninnies of the Oklahoma Legislature and the anti-choice lobby should just be content with worrying about themselves--and maybe their waistlines and cholesterol levels.

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Maes Afflicted with GOP's Abortion Schizophrenia

[From Ari Armstrong's blog:] It is unfortunate for Dan Maes, who recently eked out a narrow victory in the Republican state assembly's vote for governor, that his last name rhymes with "ways," for the cries of "Both Ways Maes" have already begun. He simultaneously wants and opposes abortion bans, at the same time and in the same respect.

Recently I pointed out that many Republicans endorse hard-core abortion bans. For example, Rand Paul wants to ban abortion at the national level -- even in cases of rape and incest -- ban common forms of birth control, and ban medical research involving embryonic stem cells. (He also wants to legally force nutrition for those in permanently vegetative states.) In Colorado, every leading candidate for governor and U.S. Senate has endorsed Amendment 62, the "personhood" measure that would grant full legal rights to fertilized eggs. (For a detailed description of what the measure would entail, and why it is terrible, see the paper written by Diana Hsieh and me.)

And yet something odd is going on in the Republican Party. For at the Colorado assembly, where the most hard-core Republican activists gathered, 74 percent of participants declared "that pregnancy, abortion, and birth control are personal private matters not subject to government regulation or interference." Slightly more participants declared that fertilized eggs deserve legal protection and that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, prompting me to declare that Republicans are schizophrenic on the issue.

Maes is the latest Republican to fall victim to the affliction. In some (atypically useful) reporting from the Colorado Independent, Scot Kersgaard reveals Maes's (shall we say) modified stance on the issue.

Kersgaard relates Maes's interview with the Independent:

I am ardently pro-life, he said, but he added that "Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and people tend to forget that. I would not try to undo that."

Yet he said he not only favors Amendment 62, the personhood amendment, but that he voted for a similar amendment when it was on the ballot two years ago and that he signed the petition to get it on the ballot this time. Still, he says the amendment is largely rhetorical and that he believes its passage would have no effect on the availability of legal abortions in Colorado.

"People are overestimating the personhood amendment. It simply defines life as beginning at conception. That's it. Who knows what the intent of it is? They are simply making a statement. That is all I see it as. Do they have another agenda? I don't know."

A cynic might note the interesting timing of Maes's newfound perspective on "personhood." Now that Maes is through with the religious right voters at the convention and must shift focus to the more-mainstream primary, he has softened his stance on abortion accordingly.

Yet Maes never has echoed the far-reaching stances of the religious right anti-abortion groups. In a survey from January, Maes clearly stated that he endorsed the "personhood" measure. Yet, when asked about birth control "that may prevent a fertilized egg or zygote from implanting in the uterus," Maes answered, "I support the laws as they stand." Yet, as I have noted, if fully enforced the "personhood" measure indeed would ban common forms of birth control, including the pill. Maes simply dodged other questions pertaining to abortion.

What are we to make of Maes's statment that Amendment 62 "simply defines life as beginning at conception?" Clearly his statement is false. The measure would grant to fertilized eggs rights of safety, property, and due process. The measure says nothing about when life begins. (Technically, life precedes conception, because both the egg and sperm are alive.) Instead, the measure defines that personhood begins with conception.

Maes misspoke, then, for one of two reasons. Either he signed the petition for the measure without actually reading it -- a sign of gross irresponsibility -- or he is simply lying about what he knows the measure says. Offhand I do not know which option the less comforting.

Regarding Maes's comment that Amendment 62 is "simply making a statement," I wonder how many bills Maes intends to sign, should he be elected governor, based on what he thinks the "statement" of a bill is, rather than based on the actual language, meaning, and enforcement of a bill. Is Maes ignoring the horrific consequences of Amendment 62 simply because he wants to make a "statement?" That in itself makes an important statement about Maes's approach to legislation.

Yet the fact that Maes performed so well at the convention says something both about his skills as a campaigner and the self-inflicted wounds his major competitor, Scott McInnis, suffers. Initially I wrote off Maes, yet he has proven himself in political battle. And, most of the time, Maes sounds like a reasonable and personable candidate.

Sometimes I even like Maes. Kersgaard reported: "He said the root of tea party unhappiness with the state of the country is that 'people just feel that Washington is taking away their personal freedoms. They just want to be left alone.'"

My sense is that the "Dr. Liberty" side of Maes is stronger than the "Mr. Police State." But such ideological schizophrenia is hardly comforting, whether in a candidate or in a party at large.

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Rand Paul Wants Total Abortion Bans

[From Ari Armstrong's blog:] Rand Paul, son of Congressman Ron Paul, recently made news when, after winning the Kentucky GOP primary for U.S. Senate, he declared that private discrimination should be legal on the basis of property rights and free association.

Yet Paul believes the government should control women's bodies by preventing them from obtaining abortions and common forms of birth control. He thinks a store owner has the right to keep out black patrons, but he does not think a woman has the right to control her own reproductive functions. He doesn't think government should interfere to stop private racism, but he thinks government should throw women and their doctors in prison for facilitating abortions.

The logical conclusion of abortion bans is that government agents should forcibly restrain women to prevent them from getting abortions. After all, if abortion is murder, as advocates of abortion bans routinely claim, then driving down the street to obtain an abortion is morally and legally equivalent to driving down the street with a loaded shotgun to blow your neighbor's head off. Police have every right to arrest and forcibly restrain threatening individuals. If abortion is murder, then a woman who declares her intent to get an abortion has threatened murder and must be strapped down if necessary to ensure delivery.

But a fertilized egg is not a person. A fertilized egg does not properly have the legal rights of a born infant. Abortion is not murder. Women have every right to take birth control drugs or obtain an abortion. Abortion bans place a woman's body under the control of the government and threaten to unleash a heavy-handed police state. (For a more complete case against abortion bans, see the paper written by Diana Hsieh and me.)

As a would-be abortion banner, Paul is the enemy of liberty, property rights, and free association.

Consider what Paul writes on his web page:

I am 100% pro life. I believe abortion is taking the life of an innocent human being.

I believe life begins at conception and it is the duty of our government to protect this life.

I will always vote for any and all legislation that would end abortion or lead us in the direction of ending abortion.
I believe in a Human Life Amendment and a Life at Conception Act as federal solutions to the abortion issue. I also believe that while we are working toward this goal, there are many other things we can accomplish in the near term. ...

In addition, I believe we may be able to save millions of lives in the near future by allowing states to pass their own anti-abortion laws. If states were able to do so, I sincerely believe many -- including Kentucky -- would do so tomorrow, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

Before 1973, abortion was illegal in most states. Since Roe v. Wade, over 50 million children have died in abortion procedures.

I would strongly support legislation restricting federal courts from hearing cases like Roe v. Wade. Such legislation would only require a majority vote, making it more likely to pass than a pro-life constitutional amendment.

I would support legislation, a Sanctity of Life Amendment, establishing the principle that life begins at conception. This legislation would define life at conception in law, as a scientific statement.

As your Senator, there are many ways I can help end abortion. I will fight for each and every one of them.

Paul helpfully includes links to two Kentucky surveys on abortion and related matters.

In response to a survey from the Kentucky Right to Life Association Political Action Committee, Paul supported the following positions:

* A nation abortion ban.

* Abortion bans even in cases of rape and incest.

* Possible bans on "chemical abortions, such as RU-486, the abortion pill, and other drugs known to prevent the newly created human being from attaching to his/her mother's womb (implantation)." Notably, the birth control pill and the IUD can prevent implantation. (The survey asks whether the responder is "morally and/or medically opposed to chemical abortions," which does not necessarily imply support for outright bans.)

* Bans on the medical use of embryonic stem cells.

* Legally required "nutrition and hydration" for "cognitively disabled people, like Terri Schiavo." The survey dishonestly conflates the condition of Schiavo, who was in a vegetative state for many years, with any sort of "disability."

In response to the Northern Kentucky Right to Life 2010 Election Candidate Questionnaire, Paul supported the following positions:

* A national abortion ban.

* Criminal penalties for anyone who facilitates an abortion, except "to prevent the death of the mother who is suffering from a physical pathology." (No exception is made for abortions that would merely protect the health of the woman.)

* Bans on the medical use of embryonic stem cells.

* Bans on the "withdrawal from an infant, incompetent, or comatose person of food and water," "except in cases where death is imminent and the patient cannot assimilate food or water." As with the last survey, this one dishonestly conflates people with slight medical conditions with the medically brain-dead.

In light of Paul's views on abortion, reproduction, and end-of-life decisions, nobody should be asking whether Paul advocates too much liberty.

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Resolved: Republicans Are Schizophrenic on Abortion

[From Ari Armtrong's blog:] As I recently noted, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton has endorsed the "personhood" ballot measure to grant full legal rights to fertilized eggs. Every other leading Republican candidate for U.S. Senate and governor has done the same.

So Colorado Republicans are over-the-top crazy for abortion bans, right? Perhaps.

At the recent state convention, Republicans passed 59 resolutions ranging from a condemnation of "net neutrality" to a recommendation to vote against retention of four state Supreme Court justices. Most of the resolutions passed with near-unanimity. The only resolutions to garner double-digit opposition pertain to the line-item veto, Congressional term limits, and abortion and reproductive matters.

Particularly odd is the apparently contradictory vote on abortion, as illustrated by the following results:

30. It is resolved by Colorado Republicans that life begins at conception and is deserving of legal protection from conception until natural death.
Total Votes 3008
YES 2378 79.06%
NO 630 20.94%

31. It is resolved that Colorado Republicans support overturning Roe v. Wade.
Total Votes 2991
YES 2340 78.23%
NO 651 21.77%

32. It is resolved by Colorado Republicans that pregnancy, abortion, and birth control are personal private matters not subject to government regulation or interference.
Total Votes 2984
YES 2210 74.06%
NO 774 25.94%

It is interesting to note that, at the convention, where the most hard-core Republican activists gathered, one in five strongly rejected abortion-ban language.

But what explains the clash between resolutions 30 and 32 (assuming the results were correctly reported)? How can so many Republicans simultaneously advocate legal rights for fertilized eggs and declare "that pregnancy, abortion, and birth control are personal private matters not subject to government regulation or interference?"

One possible explanation is that most of those voting rushed through the measures and had no idea what they were voting to support. But I'd like to think the participants took the exercise a little more seriously than that.

Why might somebody intentionally vote "yes" on both 30 and 32? First notice the ambiguities of Resolution 30. The fact that, in some sense, "life begins at conception," says nothing about whether that life is a person with full legal rights. (Technically, life precedes conception, in that both the egg and the sperm are alive.) Moreover, the nature of the "legal protection" is not specified. I agree that a woman's embryo or fetus deserves legal protection as an extension of the rights of the woman; it is properly illegal to harm a fetus against the wishes of the woman carrying it.

I think a lot of Republicans dislike irresponsible sex that results in unwanted pregnancies. (Who doesn't dislike that?) Many Republicans, I believe, allow themselves to blur the line between disapproval of irresponsible behavior resulting in abortion and legal prohibitions of abortion. Such Republicans think it's sad that some women get abortions (and it is), and they don't bother to think carefully about the implications of the bans advocated by the religious right. (For a detailed account of those implications, see the paper by Diana Hsieh and me.)

Do most Republicans really want to send women, their doctors, and their complicit spouses to prison for facilitating abortions? Do most Republicans really want to outlaw the birth control pill and the IUD because those things might cause the destruction of a fertilized egg? Do most Republicans really want to outlaw common fertility treatments that result in the destruction of fertilized eggs? Do most Republicans really want to empower police and prosecutors to go after women who miscarry under suspicious circumstances? Do most Republicans really want to put decisions about a woman's health in the hands of politicians, bureaucrats, and prosecutors?

I don't think so.

What, then, explains the fact that Republican candidates are falling all over themselves to endorse the "personhood" measure, Amendment 62?

Apparently those candidates think their endorsements will gain religious right votes in the primaries without costing them much support among Republicans who dislike the measure.

Consider a May 24 announcement from Jane Norton's campaign:

Today, Jane Norton, candidate for U.S. Senate, announced two major conservative endorsements. The American Conservative Union PAC (ACU PAC) and the Family Research Council Action PAC (FRC Action PAC) recognized Norton’s conservative credentials and endorsed her bid for the U.S. Senate. ...

“Jane Norton has been a true friend of the family in Colorado and will continue to do so when elected to the Senate. We need Senators who will fight to defend the family against the radicalism of the Left in the U.S. Senate, and who won’t be a rubber stamp for the President’s extreme agenda. We are confident Ms. Norton will serve with distinction,” said Tony Perkins, chairman of FRC Action PAC.

“Jane has been a leader in the fight to protect the unborn, and has worked to keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortion. As the executive director of the Public Health Department in Colorado, Jane was instrumental in de-funding Planned Parenthood in her state. She has been a true champion for faith, family and freedom,” added Perkins.

“Her years of experience as a leader for pro-family causes in Colorado will serve Ms. Norton well in the Senate. FRC Action PAC believes that Jane Norton will be a true advocate for the issues that best uphold and strengthen families. We are proud to support her candidacy,” concluded Perkins.

Earlier this year, Norton also won the endorsement of the Susan B. Anthony List, a conservative, pro-life organization.

Norton has also sought, and received, the support of Sarah Palin, known for her anti-abortion sentiments.

Yet Republicans who pander to the religious right or tolerate its horrific, police-state proposals are fools. Such Republicans wistfully hope that Amendment 62 doesn't really mean what its sponsors say it means, or that it will never really be enforced. They play a dangerous game.

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Did Jane Norton Endorse Amendment 62? Yes!

[From Ari Armstrong's blog:] UPDATE: Today [May 20] at 1:17 p.m., I received the following conclusive email from Cinamon Watson: "Jane supports the personhood amendment." I thank Watson and Norton's office for this forthright and definitive answer to my question. Of course, that does not explain how Norton's previously expressed views about exceptions in cases of rape and incest fit in with her endorsement of Amendment 62. What follows was written earlier today and provides the background of the story.

Okay, John Tomasic, now you may legitimately complain that Jane Norton's office is not responsive to my questions.

Does Jane Norton endorse the "personhood" measure, Amendment 62 on this year's state ballot?

It is a simple yes or no question, a question that Norton has so far refused to answer.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Norton is the presumed Republican frontrunner for U.S. Senate. Amendment 62 is the measure that would grant fertilized eggs full legal rights; I criticized it in February in a first and second article. I also coauthored a lengthy criticism of the measure in its 2008 form.

I already knew that Ken Buck and Dan Maes, underdog candidates for U.S. Senate and governor, respectively, endorsed personhood. They seem to really believe it's a good idea, and they have nothing to lose and religious right votes to pick up. But, given 73 percent of voters trounced the 2008 version of the measure, I was surprised to read that Norton and Scott McInnis, the frontrunners in the races, had also endorsed "personhood."

I first read the claim about the endorsements of Norton and McInnis on May 10 at ColoradoPols.com. Even though Colorado Pols cited a Grand Junction Daily Sentinel article about the endorsements, I did not see enough evidence to convince me at that time. In my Twitter post linking to that article, I stated, "I have not seen evidence of these alleged endorsements."

On May 11, the Colorado Independent, also citing the Sentinel, stated, "This year, the entire slate of Republican candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate are supporting the ['personhood'] amendment."

My dad Linn heard McInnis endorse the measure in person. So McInnis's endorsement is not in question. But, until today, I still did not have a good sense of whether Norton had endorsed it.

Here is what the May 10 Sentinel article by Charles Ashby states:

The last time the personhood amendment made the Colorado ballot in 2008, a number of anti-abortion Republican leaders either distanced themselves from it or outright opposed the idea because they said it went too far.

None of that seems to be the case with the 2010 version of the measure, political observers say.

As a result, all of the top-named GOP candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate have publicly supported the ballot question that would declare that life begins at conception. ...

[W[hile [Gualberto] Garcia Jones [director of Personhood Colorado] disagreed with arguments against the 2008 ballot question now just as much as he did then, he was surprised to learn it's winning support among such mainstream political candidates as Jane Norton and Ken Buck, who are running for U.S. Senate, and Dan Maes and Scott McInnis, who announced his support for the idea at a Western Colorado Conservative Alliance debate last week.

The article offers a particular event where McInnis endorsed the measure, but it offers no such detail about Norton. So I remained curious.

I called Cinamon Watson, a spokesperson for Norton, on May 17. Watson confirmed she was aware of the Sentinel story. I asked her whether it was true or false that Norton had endorsed "personhood." Watson said she would send me the answer via email.

By yesterday (May 19), I still had not heard back, so I called Watson again. "I will get it to you today," she said. I left her a voice mail near the end of the day. Today, after trying to reach Watson by her cell phone and at Norton's office, I finally received an email. Drum roll please...

Sorry this did not get to you yesterday:

"Jane believes that life begins at conception."

I had to wait three days for that?

The perceptive reader may notice that Watson did not, in fact, answer my question.

Thankfully, the good Mr. Ashby was more helpful. Late last night I sent Ashby an email asking him about the Norton endorsement.

Ashby referred me to Norton's web site:

The U. S. Constitution does not specifically speak about a right to an abortion. For decades, this important issue was left to the states to decide. In 1973, the U. S. Supreme Court, in the case of Roe v. Wade, ruled that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution included a right to privacy which, in turn, included a right to an abortion. While I believe this decision was wrongly decided and should be overturned, it is unfortunately the law of the land today. I would support a Constitutional Amendment to protect unborn human life and will strive to promote a culture of life where all life (including the elderly, children, disabled, ill, and the unborn) is valued and protected. While I believe there may be certain limited circumstances - rape, incest, and life of the mother - when exceptions are needed, I oppose abortion because I believe human life begins at conception. I will oppose all federal funding of abortion. I support the appointment of judges to federal courts, including the Supreme Court, who will strictly construe the U. S. Constitution and not manufacture new rights or remedies not specifically provided for by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution.

By my reading, that statement does not constitute an endorsement of Amendment 62. I think the "Constitutional Amendment" to which Norton refers likely is an unspecified federal measure. Further, Norton's exceptions for rape and incest clearly contradict the impact of Amendment 62, as Colorado Right to Life recognizes: "Republican Jane Norton has supported 'abortion exceptions' in the past (i.e. for rape & incest, which is from our perspective 'pro-abortion with exceptions')."

So what I think happened is that Ashby unintentionally misinterpreted the intended meaning of Norton's web page as the support for his claim that Norton endorsed "personhood." [Update: Ashby continues to think that his original reading of Norton's web page was the correct one. Regardless of whether Norton intended to endorse Amendment 62 on her web page, obviously now her endorsement of it is entirely clear.]

Ashby also unintentionally put Norton in a tight corner just before the state assembly, which is this Saturday.

Apparently Norton's strategy was to remain silent on Amendment 62 and respond with vague generalities in the hopes of appeasing both sides. Ashby's report upset the fence on which Norton was perched and made the world believe she had endorsed "personhood." The last thing Norton wants to do is take a definitive stand on the issue. If she now declares she does not, after all, endorse the measure, that will infuriate the religious right, which wields significant power in the GOP primaries. If she affirms that she does endorse it, that will open her up to hard-hitting attacks in the general election.

And so she continues to dodge the question.

At least Buck has the courage of his convictions on this score, though he is, by my lights, dead wrong.

I will send Watson the link to this article. If Norton sends me a more clarifying response, I will update this page accordingly. [Please see the update at the top of this article, which shows that Norton definitively endorses "personhood."]

This Norton conundrum does illustrate nicely the problems that continue to plague the Republican Party.

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Chickens Come Home to Roost

Abortion Foes Capitalize on Health Law They Fought:

Abortion opponents fought passage of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul to the bitter end, and now that it's the law, they're using it to limit coverage by private insurers.

An obscure part of the law allows states to restrict abortion coverage by private plans operating in new insurance markets. Capitalizing on that language, abortion foes have succeeded in passing bans that, in some cases, go beyond federal statutes.

"We don't consider elective abortion to be health care, so we don't think it's a bad thing for fewer private insurance companies to cover it," said Mary Harned, attorney for Americans United for Life, a national organization that wrote a model law for the states.

Abortion rights supporters are dismayed.

Most of those abortion right supporters have only themselves to blame. They pushed hard for ObamaCare, using all kinds of tricks to overcome widespread public opposition. They could not have been honestly ignorant of the threat to abortion rights in ObamaCare, not given the contentious debates about it. Nor could they have been unaware that granting government unprecedented control over medicine would grant that same government unprecedented control over access to abortion too. And -- surprise, surprise -- governments are not always composed of staunch supporters of abortion rights.

Sadly, we told you so. Ari Armstrong wrote about this very problem in this blog post. My husband, writing for Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM) warned about abortion becoming a political football in this op-ed. As he says:

Government-controlled health insurance will mean politically-controlled medicine -- not only with respect to abortion but for health services in general. ObamaCare will turn medicine into a game of permanent political football, where the politically favored perpetually pound ordinary Americans without special "pull." Until we replace ObamaCare with free-market reforms, Americans had better get used to being the permanent tackling dummies for special-interest groups.

The chickens are coming home to roost. Abortion rights can only be respected when the government recognizes and protects all rights, particularly the rights of property and contract found only in free markets.

Remember: Christian fundamentalists will be more than happy to build their theocratic dictatorship on the socialist/fascist foundations laid by the progressives.

(H/T: Sascha.)

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Protect Families Protect Choices Versus Amendment 62

The Denver Daily News reports that the major opponents of Amendment 48 have rejoined forces to oppose the new "personhood" measure, Amendment 62. Here are a few highlights:

An opposition campaign was announced yesterday to a pro-life ballot question that would give human rights to embryos. Protect Families Protect Choices says it will begin an "aggressive" campaign against Amendment 62, which was qualified by the Secretary of State's office last month for the November 2010 ballot. ... The initiative would effectively ban abortion in the State of Colorado.

"Here we go again," said Leslie Durgin, lead organizer of the opposition campaign and vice president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. "Amendment 62 is bad policy, bad law and bad medicine."

Proponents of the initiative are confident that they will have better success this year. Keith Mason, co-founder of Personhood USA, points out that this year proponents have slashed the term "fertilization" from the ballot question, instead using the phrase "biological development." The amendment would read, "The term 'person' shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being." ...

Opponents do not believe the change in language will help Personhood supporters because it still "presents the same dangerous outcomes."

"In 2008, voters learned that the 'definition of a person' amendment was an overt attempt to insert religion into law," said Jeremy Shaver, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado. We will fight once again to make sure Coloradans know the truth about Amendment 62."

The article contains some interesting statistics on likely voting patterns, but I think the "personhood" advocates are kidding themselves: Amendment 62 will go down in flames, just as Amendment 48 did. It's unfortunate that the battle needs to be fought again, but at least it's an opportunity to discuss the proper foundations of abortion rights. So ... "here we go again" is right.

You can find out more about "Protect Families Protect Choices" from its web site.

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ObamaCare and Abortion

[From Ari Armstrong's blog:] One of the big fights leading up to the vote on the Democratic health bill (ObamaCare) was over abortion funding. The basic dilemma is whether tax-subsidized health care -- and taxes already fund most U.S. health costs -- will cover abortions.

What both sides seem to forget is that, when politicians control health care, it turns out that politicians control health care. So whether politicians will permit tax funds to subsidize abortions depends entirely on which politicians get into power.

Anti-abortion Christians who think that an executive order or even an explicit legislative declaration can permanently prevent the tax subsidization of abortions are simply delusional. Various Catholic groups endorse politically run medicine but insist that it not subsidize abortions. But when you render unto Caesar the control of medicine, Caesar will dip into tax funds to pay for whatever medical procedures he damn well pleases. That U.S. medicine is controlled by thousands of pigmy Caesars who vote, bicker, and draft reams of regulations first does not alter that basic fact.

Leftists who wish to protect a woman's right to choose to get an abortion, but who deny to all women and men the right to associate freely to obtain medicine and insurance, should contemplate a possible future in which the religious right seizes control of the political machinery built by the left. Prohibitions on the tax funding of abortions will be the least of our worries.

I have some questions for the religious right. Do you really care, at all, about liberty in medicine? Does forcing somebody to finance a kidney transplant register a blip on your moral radar? Or are you perfectly fine with the forcible redistribution of wealth to fund health care, so long as it doesn't include abortions? If the left offered to completely ban abortions, in exchange for the complete political control of medicine, is that a bargain you'd happily accept?

I have only a couple of questions for the left. What sort of world do you think we'll be living in if the religious right takes over the Democratic health law? How is politically run health care remotely consistent with the exhortation to "keep your laws off of my body?"

I don't really expect either the religious right or the left to attempt to answer these questions. Even the attempt to answer them would indicate some residual concern with liberty and individual rights, which I do not believe that many on either side any longer possess.

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