No on 62

(Cross-posted on my blog)

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As I was driving around Colorado Springs I happened to notice a group of people standing around in a circle on a sidewalk. They were packed very tightly into a circle, between the busy road and a small fence. Just past them, was a private drive that lead to a complex of a couple medical buildings. One of them, was a PlannedParenthood. I could have just driven past them and into the driveway, but I decided to park instead and walk right by them. As I passed by them, I noticed that they were all being lead in mumbling to themselves by a man in a flowing white dress (and past labor day!)

They were too busy praying to bother with me as I passed by. I was expecting them to attack or try to stop me, as the antis at other clinics often do and as clinic escorts (there were none, by the way) such as everysaturdaymorning has to contend with. Perhaps they thought I was just walking past since I could have simply driven right past them. They were blocking the sidewalk, so I had to walk in the street. But I did get past them.

When I got inside the clinic, the cheerful receptionist gave me a friendly greeting and asked me how she could help me. “Well, I saw all those people standing out by the sidewalk and it got me to thinking, I should really make a donation to PlannedParenthood today.” As she ran my credit card, I noticed some lawn signs sitting against the wall behind her. ‘NO on 62.’

‘What is 62?’ I asked. She informed me that it was the second attempt by the antis in this decade to distort the definition of the word ‘person’ so as to include even simple zygotes.

The actual text of the proposed amendment reads as follows:

Proposed Language for a Colorado Personhood Constitutional Amendment Initiative

SECTION 1. Article II of the constitution of the state of Colorado is amended
BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION to read:

Section 32. Person defined. As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state
constitution, the term “person” shall apply to every human being from the beginning of
the biological development of that human being.

Sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the Colorado state constitution, which the amendment refers to are:

Section 3. Inalienable rights.
All persons have certain natural, essential and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; of acquiring, possessing and protecting property; and of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

Section 6. Equality of justice.
Courts of justice shall be open to every person, and a speedy remedy afforded for every injury to person, property or character; and right and justice should be administered without sale, denial or delay.

Section 25. Due process of law.
No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.

Amendment 62, according to the PP receptionist I spoke to and Protect Families Protect Choices the intent of this bill is to bar access to abortion services and even contraception. According to PFPC some possible effects of this amendment are:

Ban All Abortion: Amendment 62 would ban abortion even for victims of rape and incest or when a woman’s life is at risk.#

Outlaw Emergency Contraception and Birth Control pills: Amendment 62 is so broad it could outlaw emergency contraception, the birth control pill and other methods of birth control because they can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

Restrict Health Care: A woman with cancer could be refused life-saving medical treatment because it could put a fertilized egg in danger.

Violate The American Value Of Religious Freedom: Amendment 62 would insert one religious viewpoint into the state constitution, making one religious viewpoint the law of the land.Clogged Courts: Amendment 62 would impact literally thousands of laws ranging from when property rights are granted, to inheritance rights, to who can file a lawsuit.

I was flabbergasted to hear of such and absurd thing, pretending a fetus is a person and then trying to grand it rights as such, never-mind the fact that no person ever has the right to the body of another anyway. But banning abortion, banning contraceptives? That’s crazy! Nevermind that such a the US Supreme Court has already struck down outright ban on contraception and abortion.

So I checked the source of this disgusting amendment, Persohood Colorado. On their website, I found a page entitled Scare Tactic Alert wherein they attempt to dispel the various ‘myths’ (many of which they actually confirm to be true.)

Note: to protect my sanity, and to avoid writing “NO!” fifty-bazillion times while I bang my head on my desk in foamy-mouthed rage, I will ignore any and all references to zygotes/blastocysts/fetuses as babies/children/people.

Because they aren’t.

I assume my audience is smart enough to know the difference.

Many of you will be confronted with misleading information and outright lies put out by the abortion industry and cheerfully carried by the main stream media.  This page uncovers the most frequent scare tactics and gives truthful answers.

Scare Tactic     Is it True?
It Will Ban Contraception     Lie
It Will Ban In Vitro Fertilization     Lie
It Will Threaten Doctors who Perform Legitimate Surgeries     Lie
It Will Threaten Women Who Miscarry With Criminal Prosecution     Lie
It Will Put the Life of the Child Ahead of The Life of the Mother     Lie

Ok, so here it says it doesn’t ban contraception, IVF, doesn’t threaten doctors and women who have had miscarrages, and doesn’t endanger a woman’s health. Then later on in the same page, they show that they were themselves lying when they declared the above-mentioned items to be lies.

It won’t ban contraception.

Contraception comes from the words “contra” and “conception”. Properly understood it means something that prevents conception. In 1965 the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a medical bulletin which “officially” changed the definition of conception from the union of a sperm and an egg to implantation of the young human being in the wall of the uterus. The reason they did this was to make chemical abortifacients seem more palatable to the American people who would now be tricked into believing that the human being did not begin until implantation. While the AMA and pro-abortion bioethicists have tried to obfuscate the meaning of conception, embryology is very clear about the beginning of life: the beginning of life (under normal sexual reproduction) takes place when the sperm touches the ovum. Barrier methods of contraception that prevent the union of the sperm and the egg will not be outlawed, since neither a sperm nor an egg by itself is a human being.

OK, first off, there are several factual errors here that could easily be dispelled in a high school health class. Conception is the fertilization of an ovum by a spermatatazoa. The sperm that fertilizes an egg is not necessarily the first one to touch it, but is the first one to penetrate the cell membrane. This is and has always been the defection of conception.

It’s pregnancy that begins at implantation and try as they might to distort that fact, implantation remains the mark of the beginning of pregnancy for the simple reason that that is when the woman’s body starts responding. Most fertilized eggs are simply washed away with menstrus and thus no pregnancy occurs.

Neither conception nor implantation is the beginning of life. Sperm and egg are both already alive well before either event takes place. Please refer to my earlier remark about a high school health class. And by what standard can they possibly declare that sperm and egg aren’t human beings, but zygotes are, anyway?

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the page…

It will ban chemical abortifacients.

The abortion industry, with the willing complicity of the main stream media, has redefined the term contraceptive to include poisons and devices that cause the early human being to die. These poisons are called abortifacients because they may cause early abortions. When the abortion industry says that the 2010 Personhood Amendment would outlaw contraceptives, they are either lying now, or they were lying then, for they had always told women that chemical contraceptives did not kill a living embryo. A woman should know whether a chemical would kill her child. The 2010 Personhood Amendment will end the lies.

And by “end the lies, they mean promote more lies when doing so is convenient to their anti-choice, anti-woman, anti-human, anti-life, anti-child, anti-family, and anti-freedom agenda.

I just love the nonsensical references to the imaginary ‘abortion industry.’ Does anyone ever talk about a ‘pap-smear industry,’ or a ‘maternity industry’? How about a ‘chemotherapy industry’?

OK, so now it’s talking about ‘abortifacient’ contraception and ‘poisons and devices.’ It’s ambiguous exactly what they’re referring to here by that. I checked and checked but couldn’t find a clear answer anywhere on their site. Then I found a link to contact them, and I decided to drop them a line:

To whom it might concern.

Good day. My name is Julie. I am a pro-choice blogger writing a fact-checking article about Colorado Amendment 62. I’m not interested in a debate. I would simply like an answer to some questions about 62’s affect on access to contraception.

I read on the page entitled “Scare Tactic Alert” that the proposed amendment would not ban contraceptives. However, later “poisons and devices” described as “abortifacients” are referenced.

I checked all over this site and even visited PersonhoodUSA (which I presume to be the parent organization)in an attempt to find out exactly what “poisons and devices” are being disparaged and whether or not 62 could indeed ban them.

If you find the time, I would like to know specifically what contraceptive methods are being called ‘abortifacient’ and whether or not those methods of birth control would or could be banned by 62 should it succeed where 48 failed.

Sincerely,
Julie, goldencoathanger.com

I did my best to be polite in hopes that I may be more likely to recieve an anwer. As of yet, I have not recieved a response (because I just sent that a minute ago, lol) but when/if I do I shall pulish it here.

In the mean time, I’ll go ahead and field the guess that they’re refering to hormonal contraceptives and IUDs. These contracpetives are often declared to be ‘abortifacients’ by people who don’t know anything. In theory, either one could affect the lining of the uterus to prevent implantation should fertilization occur, and the blastocyst would simple be washed away with menstrus. (Stress and diet could do that too.)

Hormonal contraceptives work mainly by preventing ovulation, and secondly by affecting cervical mucus. No ovulation, no ovum. No ovum, no zygote. It’s been speculated that should fertilization occur, it may be possible that hormonal contraceptives could cause it not to implant. (That’s fine with me too.) However, this has never been proven.

Non-hormonal IUDs works differently, prompting the endometrium.to release of leukocytes and prostaglandins which are hostile to both sperm and egg. Additionally copper in the IUD increases this spermicidal effect. Again with the IUD it is speculated that it could, in rare cases, hinder the implantation of blastocysts (and again I wouldn’t care a fig if it did, I’d still get the result I want – that is not being pregnant) and again this is not proven.

So if these are the mysterious “abortifacients” and 62 would, indeed ban them, then the “Scare Tacitc” isn’t a lie at all. 62 really could ban non-barrier contraception. Sorry, who is lying again?

It won’t ban or penalize in vitro fertilization.

However, it will reform the current in vitro practices. The process of in vitro fertilization simply means that the egg and the sperm are joined outside of the body of the woman. In modern practice, fertility clinics will often create multiple human beings and then select the ones that they consider to be the best. The others are then discarded like medical waste. In Britain alone, 1.2 million human beings were created in in vitro fertility clinics and then discarded. In the U.S. 95% of the human beings created for in vitro fertilization were destroyed. The Colorado Personhood Amendment would not prohibit in vitro fertilization, instead it would force medical scientists to come up with ethical alternatives to the mass production and mass extermination of human beings at the hands of fertility clinics.

What reform, specifically? They don’t say. They probably have no idea either. They certainly don’t seem to notice (or if they do, they fail to mention) that many of the unused blastocysts are frozen and donated for use by other couples (funny I don’t see them jumping in line to volunteer their uteruses,) or used for stem-cell research (something that saves lives, and yet, they oppose.)

They don’t express much knoledge here of how the IVF process works. Muliple eggs are fertilized as a means of hedging bets. The more you use, the more likely you are to have a successful pregnancy. And considering how very expensive the IVF process is, people generally will opt for the surest option in the fewest attempts.

In the absence of whatever use for unused embryos might be that the antis would find acceptable, 62 could effectively ban or hinder the success and drive up the cost of (and thereby limit access to in a de facto ban) IVF.

Two down.

That’s three.

It won’t threaten the death penalty on doctors who do legitimate invasive surgery that could unintentionally harm a child in the womb.

In Colorado, the death penalty is only available for first degree murder with aggravating factors. First degree murder requires deliberation and intent. There are no legitimate medical procedures that are intended to kill the child in the womb, and in those extremely rare situations where a woman needs treatment that might unintentionally result in the death of the child, the doctor would not have acted with intent to kill or even harm the child, but with intent to cure the mother. Before Colorado passed it’s abortion law legalizing abortion in 1967 there were no prosecutions of doctors for legitimate medical treatment. There will be no threat whatsoever to doctors practicing legitimate medicine when the Colorado Personhood Amendment passes. This is a scare tactic.

I find it nothing less than asounding that these freedom-haters presume to get to decide what kind of medical care that other people get is and is not ‘legitimate.’ Funny thing about the word legitmate, too. I looked it up you see. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines legitimate as:

3 a : accordant with law or with established legal forms and requirements

Abortion actually is legitimate. And 62, as I will later show, is intended to ban abortion. So the claim ” There will be no threat whatsoever to doctors practicing legitimate medicine when the Colorado Personhood Amendment passes,” is a lie.

Knocking ‘em down!

It won’t open the door to criminal investigations of women who miscarry.

Again, miscarriages are completely unintentional. For a woman to be charged for a miscarriage she would have to have acted with criminal culpability which includes the performance of an act and a matching criminal intent. These standards would be the same as would be applied to any mother who harms her children, born or preborn. This is a scare tactic.

I object to the implication that any miscarriage, intentional or not, could be called “criminal.” Abortions don’t have criminal intent and arbitrarily implying that they do is asinine.

How does one know what caused a miscarriage, if you’re going to define certain causes criminal, unless they investigate? And what exactly constitutes “criminal culpability” to them, anyway? A chemical or surgical abortion? How about certain medications known to harm pregnancies? What about alcohol? Heavy lifting? Improper diet? They don’t actually say what actions they deem to entail “criminal culpability” nor can “criminal culpability” be determined without investigation.

So 62 could open the door to criminal investigations of women who miscarry

It won’t ban surgeries for women who have tubal pregnancies, also known as ectopic pregnancies.

The crucial issue in criminal law is always intent. Law School 101 teaches you that the basic elements of any crime are a guilty mind (mens rea) and a guilty act (actus reus). A doctor who performs a procedure to cut out a damaged section of a fallopian tube where a human embryo is lodged is not intending to kill the human embryo, instead she is attempting to cure a physical ailment, and unintentionally causing the death of a human embryo. It should be noted that the tubal pregnancy may be the result of an embryo that never developed and is effectively dead, or it may be the result of a scarred fallopian tube. In the case where the fallopian tube is damaged, it may be a matter of years before medical science evolves to the point where doctors are able to rescue the child and re-implant him into the uterus.

So it won’t ban surgeries for women who suffer ectopic pregnancies, it just forces them to be cut apart unnecessarily and lose a vital part of their reproductive system. Oh, yeah. That’s muuuch better.

So they would ban, safe procedures that would abort the life-threatening pregnancy without invasive surgery, increased cost, and increased risk. Apparently, it’s OK to do the exact same thing as long as we can make a woman suffer for it somehow. How nice. I wonder what they’d say about the ectopic pregnancies that aren’t in the fallopian tubes but instead in the cervix or abdomen. See this is why the antis need to leave the medical work to the doctors.

As a side-note, I find this bit interesting “…not intending to kill the human embryo, instead she is attempting to cure a physical ailment, and unintentionally causing the death of a human embryo” I could say the exact same thing about any abortion. The intent isn’t to kill an embryo/fetus, it’s to remove an unwanted parasitic organism from an actual person woman whom it causes to be sick, causes extreme pain to, and risks the life of (all pregnancies have the potential to cause death even if no complications were foreseen) by clearing out the lining of the uterus and anything that may be attached to it.

I also find it interesting that no where are other many life-threatening complications listed, nor is any exception for these complications, or even the ectopic pregnancies they mentioned, stated anywhere in the text of the proposed amendment. So it could ban abortion even if necessary to save a woman’s life.

Furthermore, banning any abortion at all is putting women’s lives at risk. Any pregnancy, even if no complications are foreseen has the potential of being fatal. And the US has an unacceptably high maternal mortality rate for a developed nation, 11 for every 100,000 live births. By the way, that’s almost 18 times more than the mortality rate for abortion.

But more than that, banning abortion doesn’t make it go away. It makes it unsafe and classiest. Doctors still willing to perform abortions will drive up their costs, so only wealthy women will have access to safe abortions. The remainder will resort to unsafe means. As before the legalization of abortion, women will die by the thousands because of the actions of those who simply do not deserve to call themselves “pro-life”

Pro-lie is more like it. Their 62 does, in fact, “Put the Life of the Child Ahead of The Life of the Mother,” even as they abuse the terms ‘child’ and ‘mother.’

Hmm… OK, I think we all know who the real liars are now. They continue:

It will make sure that children in the womb are treated exactly the same as children outside the womb.

It will mandate that those courts that have the power of judicial review strike down those laws that are incompatible with the state’s highest authority, namely the state’s constitution.  Alternatively, the laws that contradict the 2010 Personhood Constitutional Amendment will become moot.

Merely pretending that fetus is the same as a child doesn’t make it so. I always find it outrageous that these people constantly refer to a “child in the womb” or “unborn baby” as if the only difference between an 8-week mass of tissue and a fully sentient, self-aware human being is passage through a birth canal.

More than that, since when do actual children “children outside the womb,” have rights that include the right to anyone else’s body. I’d like to find that right enumerated somewhere. They don’t want to just impose upon fetuses the same rights that actual people have, these antis want to grant them rights no person has.

It will ban human embryonic stem cell research.

Human embryonic stem cell research is nothing more than human harvesting. There are other more successful treatment options involving the use of umbilical and adult stem cells that don’t require the creation and destruction of human beings for medical experimentation.

@#&%*$@#*&%^$##$&*@#%*&^%$#$%##^*^%%$#@!!!!

NO! Stem cell research doesn’t destroy human beings! Their precious little embryos aren’t human beings! They’re embryos and nothing more! Deal with it!

Stem cell research has the potential to save the lives of human beings in ways adult and umbilical stem cells might not and it keeps leftover embryos from IVF from being wasted, which they decried. Stem cell research saves lives, and what happened to not putting “… the Life of the Child Ahead of The Life of the Mother”? Here they happily put the lives of mere embryos, which would otherwise be thrown out, according to them, above the lives of fully sentient people.

It will ban abortion.

Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being. Science can now pinpoint the exact beginning of a human being’s life, therefore, any actions taken with criminal intent will be punished under the existing criminal code, irrespective of whether the child is in or out of the womb.

This seems to me like a contradiction of the statement that 62 will not “…Put the Life of the Child Ahead of The Life of the Mother” for reasons I’ve already discussed. And scientists (not science. I hat it when people talk about science as if it was a conscious entity that walked around doing things and making statements,) who are knowledgeable on the subject know that life doesn’t begin at conception, again for reasons I’ve already discussed. (Stop trying to use science antis, it’s against you.)

But could this thing really ban abortion in Colorado? It’s not likely. In 2008, a similar proposed amendment, Amendment 48, was decisively defeated at the ballot. I am optimistic that sanity will prevail again. But what if this horrific amendment really does weasel it’s way onto the state constitution? Could it really ban abortion and contracption?

Well, it’s not really likely. Last I checked, the US Constitution trumped state constitutions, and the US Supreme Court has already ruled outright bans on contraception and abortion to be unconstitutional. However, this statute could become a “trigger law” that would be ready to go into effect should RvW be overturned. Or it could actually be implemented until appealed over the course of a slow process that could take several years until finally being overturned by the US Supreme Court. Or, worse yet, bringing the inhuman amendment to the Supreme Court could result in reviewing and overturning RvW, an obviously nightmarish outcome.

So don’t be lazy. If you live in Colorado, vote NO on 62. And if you have the time, actively participate in Protect Ffamilies Protect Choices’ No on 62 campaign. Your support could make all the difference. If not, spread the word as best you can to anyone and everyone and be on the lookout for similar assaults on freedom in your own state. You can also E-mail PersonhoodColorado or E-mail their director, Gualberto Garcia Jones J.D., or call them at (303) 456-2800.