By Jonathan F. Will
[Cross-posted at Hamilton and Griffin on Rights.]
This November citizens of Colorado will have an opportunity to vote on a proposed amendment (Amendment 67) to their state constitution that would define the words “person” and “child” in the Colorado Criminal Code and Colorado Wrongful Death Act to include “unborn human beings.” Similar personhood measures were rejected by a margin of 3-to-1 by Colorado citizens in 2008 and 2010, and a proposal in 2012 failed to receive the requisite signatures to get on the ballot. Is this version 4.0 all that different?
A New Strategy
In short, the language is different, but not in ways that ought to matter for those concerned about the implications for reproductive rights. I was initially surprised that a fourth personhood proposal was able to secure enough signatures to get on the ballot when the third measure was not. After speaking with a reporter from Colorado, it became clear that the strategy this time around was very different.
This most recent personhood effort rode the wave of momentum generated by the 2012 story of a Colorado woman, hit by a drunk driver, who lost her pregnancy in the eighth month of gestation (a boy she had named Brady). At that time, Colorado did not have a law on the books that permitted the drunk driver to be prosecuted for the death of the fetus. Amendment 67, advertised as “The Brady Amendment” was offered as a solution, and there was no trouble generating over 100,000 signatures. Even without Amendment 67, Colorado has since passed a Crimes Against Pregnant Women Act, which criminalizes (with varying degrees of punishment) the termination of a woman’s pregnancy without her consent. This new law does not define the fetus as a person, expressly permits women to choose to have abortions, and certainly is not considered to go far enough for those in favor of sweeping personhood measures. Amendment 67 was thus still viewed to be necessary by some. Read More
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