Personhood amendment readies for Round 2
By Charles Ashby 
| August 31, 2009 | 7:01 AM
If at first you don’t succeed — even by a 3-1 margin — try, try again. That is the sentiment from the folks who tried last fall to get Colorado voters to declare that life begins at conception.
Now the group is back, or at least trying to come back. This month, the Colorado Secretary of State’s title board approved wording for a new question for the 2010 ballot. The proposed measure, assuming it gets the necessary petitions to put it on the ballot, is virtually identical to Amendment 48, which 73 percent of Colorado voters defeated last fall.
That trouncing isn’t putting a damper on the folks at Personhood Colorado or its new national group, Personhood USA, which is pushing similar measures in 29 other states, said Keith Mason, who’s heading the effort in Colorado and nationwide.
“The difference in the strategy of the campaign will be to be a bit more upfront with what we expect the language will do and what this campaign’s all about, which is protecting human life,” Mason said. “Last time, some of the issues were skirted a bit, but we plan not to do that again.”
Mason said the only difference between last year’s measure and the one he hopes to put on next year’s ballot is replacing the word fertilization with biological beginning because it helped get the endorsement of Dr. Dianne Irving, a bioethicist and biologist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
The campaign will be different, in part, because Mason expects it to be better funded, although to date it has collected no money.
“The real reason to do it in Colorado again is each time we do it, we build a little more momentum. We expect to get a higher percentage of the vote next year, and if we do, that will be a victory,” he said. “We were a fairly underfunded campaign and not supported by any major organization. Focus on the Family didn’t donate any money. The (Catholic) archdioceses didn’t donate any money or sign on to the bill at all.
“Because we didn’t receive any support, we were all grass-roots; most folks didn’t even know about it. Each time we do it, it’s a tremendous opportunity to educate the state.”
It’s also an opportunity for the group that helped defeat the measure last year, Protect Families Protect Choices Coalition, to reorganize and do it all over again.
The coalition, which raised $1.5 million in campaign contributions to Mason’s $500,000, banded dozens of separate organizations that don’t normally agree or even take a stand on the abortion issue, including Planned Parenthood, the Colorado Libertarian Party, the Colorado Bar Association and the American Fertility Association.
“The true goal of this initiative is to criminalize all abortions. It’s still going to impact literally thousands of laws in the state, and it’s definitely going to bring the government lawyers and courts into our personal lives,” said Fofi Mendez, the coalition’s chief coordinator. “This has very far-reaching consequences for important life decisions, such as in vitro fertilization, birth control, and has impacts on women and their families. Not only did we have the choice community opposing this, but we also had the medical community on our side, the legal community, the research community.”
Although they weren’t part of the coalition, other abortion opponents such as former congressman and Senate candidate Bob Schaffer and Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams also spoke out against the ballot question.
Jeremy Shaver, director of the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado and a coalition member, said he’s not surprised Mason and his group are trying again. In fact, he expects the matter will never go away.
“It appears their strategy is to go the long haul until they achieve the type of victories they want to secure,” Shaver said. “So unfortunately we probably are in a position where we have to fight these sorts of proposals indefinitely.”
Various opponents have come out against the measure for various reasons. Lawyers don’t like it, in part, because they say it would wreak havoc with state laws and the courts. Medical professionals hate it, in part, because it attempts to outlaw a legal medical procedure. Abortion supporters oppose it for obvious reasons, but abortion opponents, such as the Archdiocese of Denver, dislike the measure for reasons that aren’t so clear.
Many of those objections center on the likelihood that the measure, if passed, would be challenged in court, ultimately leading to a legal precedent that could help solidify the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions in the first place.
For Shaver, it’s simply because the Colorado Constitution is no place for one religious group’s views to be aired.
“The proposed personhood amendment is really an attempt to put a religious definition of life in the state Constitution,” he said. “We believe state policy and state law should be based on what’s in the best interests of the common good and on sound science and reason and logic. We should not be making laws based on religious beliefs.”
Mason, to no one’s surprise, disagrees. To him, nothing could be more basic to a nation’s laws than its people, and in this case, when a person is a person.
His measure hasn’t officially been certified to appear on next year’s ballot, but most expect it will. He needs only about 76,000 signatures from valid registered voters, and he’s got plenty of time to get them. Last year, his group got more than twice the needed names.
“As it continues to build momentum and steam, I believe more will sign on. They’ll come around,” Mason said. “Some don’t support this because they don’t support the personhood of the child, and some just don’t think it’s the right time. Those are two different ideologies. The first we may not be able to sway, but the second I believe we will because it’s always the right time to do the right thing.”
abortion, ballot measure, election, personhood amendment
