Personhood Amendment Defeated in Colorado

By John Ballard

Another political corner where Democrats have hunkered down, hiding, is the abortion issue. Even when asked directly in a debate about his stand on abortion, Harry Reid only murmured "The Hyde Amendment is the law" and Angle moved on to something else.  Add abortion to the list of causes where Democrats are keeping their heads down rather than standing up for what is right. This issue shows how far to the extreme Right the political center has shifted.

Fortunately voters in Colorado stopped an extreme amendment, the "Personhood Amendment," with a clear margin.

Coloradans once again rejected an attempt to amend the state�s constitution to give full constitutional rights to fertilized eggs. Amendment 62, known unofficially as the Definition of Person amendment and the Fetal Personhood amendment, sought to apply the term �person� to �every human being from the beginning of biological development of that human being.�

Similar to the proposed Amendment 48 in 2008, this year�s ballot initiative aimed to legally recognize fertilized human eggs as people, giving them the same �inalienable rights, equality of justice and due process of law� that the Colorado constitution grants all human beings. And just like Amendment 48, which failed 73.21 percent to 26.79 percent, this year�s version was overwhelmingly rejected, garnering only 30 percent of the vote.

If it had passed, it would have made all abortions and some forms of birth control illegal � including the �morning after� pill, birth control pills and intrauterine devices (IUDs), all of which can cause a woman�s body to reject a fertilized egg.

The amendment would also have affected people�s ability to make use of in vitro technology to combat infertility and would have eliminated stem cell research.

Doctors worried that they might face criminal charges if steps taken to preserve a mother�s health resulted in harm to a fetus. Women�s health advocates expressed concerned that women who had natural miscarriages might face legal inquiries, including invasive forensic vaginal exams, to make sure they hadn�t deliberately terminated their pregnancies.

The Hyde amendment is a political football which has been kicked around for thirty-five years.

When the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the U.S., Medicaid covered abortion services until 1977 when the Hyde amendment went into effect.

Introduced by Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) in 1976, the amendment that bears his name restricts federal funding for abortion. Passed by the House as part of the Department of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare Appropriation Act in 1976, the Hyde Amendment prohibits appropriated funds to be expended on abortion except when the mother's life is endangered by her pregnancy.

Because Bart Stupak (D-MI) decided to retire at the end of his term he escaped having to defend his vote to pass PPACA even though he had co-sponsored an amendment worded to get a half dozen of his peers out of trouble who came from heavily single-issue pro-life districts. Back when Tea Party insurgents and others were disrupting town hall meetings all over the country I watched Bart Stupak on C-SPAN conducting a public meeting in his district. He is smart, disciplined and totally informed about the details of the legislation. I watched enoough to know that the much-maligned "Stupak Amendment" was anything but the poison pill the Left was claiming. The wording was no different from the Hyde Amendment so nothing really changed.

 

In contrast to meetings elsewhere, Stupak's meeting January 7 was a model of decorum. In retrospect it was a lost cause since the public option didn't survive, but Bart Stupak should get credit for a failed effort to persuade extreme views from the Right to support the legislation. His footnote in the affair will paint him unfairly as an opponent when in fact he was one of the good guys.

I had hopes for legislation federalizing the abortion question once and for all. But even though a majority of citizens would be in favor of such legislation the shrill voices of a minority will continue to block any such efforts.