July 29, 2019 09:37 AM UTC

Banning Abortion Six Ways From Sunday

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post’s Anna Staver reports, it’s on off on again:

Two women who want to ban abortions past 22 weeks in Colorado aren’t giving up after their first stab at language for a proposed ballot initiative was rejected by the Secretary of State’s Office for a procedural error.

Erin Behrens and Giuliana Day are in the process of submitting six new proposals for statewide initiatives that would ban abortions past 22 weeks except in cases where the woman’s physical life was at risk. Performing an abortion for any other reason would be a class 3 felony, on par with second-degree murder or vehicular homicide and punishable by up to a dozen years in prison.

The draft initiatives have a lot of similarities, but they do have a few important differences. One of them contains a “provision for survival” that would require any approved abortion past 22 weeks be performed in a way that “provides the best opportunity for the fetus to survive.”

Colorado has repeatedly rejected abortion bans in recent years at the polls, and in the last few elections the measures have been increasingly viewed by Republicans as politically self-injurious beyond any benefit in terms of rallying conservative voters to the polls. It’s relatively easy for supporters of these measures to collect the required signatures to make the ballot by circulating their petitions at church.

The political question for these measures has always been whether they hurt Republicans more than they help, and the consensus after the last few attempts has been that they aren’t worth the blowback Republicans suffer at the polls–not to mention that base trouble these measures invite if Republicans don’t pay sufficient lip service.

There’s an apparent belief among some Republicans that this measure’s ban on so-called “late term” abortions may fare better, but given that almost all such abortions are performed out of dire medical necessity and are a tiny percentage of the total number of abortions performed, the countermessage that this is just another intrusion into decisions that should be entirely between doctor and patient should be very effective.

With abortion rights facing a high-profile threat nationally, we think the voters who crushed the “Personhood” ballot measures in Colorado in election after election can be counted open to turn out in force against any anti-abortion measure that makes the ballot. Under that scenario, in our pro-choice state, this helps Democrats.