( – promoted by Colorado Pols)
Horrible news for women’s rights from the state House tonight.
From State Rep Daniel Kagan(D) regarding HB 12-1130:
“…we were unable to prevent the Republican majority in the House from passing on second reading the First Degree Homicide of the Unborn Child bill. Under some circumstances, it makes both termination of pregnancy and the use of the morning after pill a homicide. It also confers personhood on a newly fertilized egg.”
Pols readers may believe this bill will be stopped in the Senate. Tea Party legislators have been successful in passing 135 bills nationwide to limit women’s reproductive rights this year. To assume it cannot happen in Colorado is a dangerous assumption.
Please call your State Representatives and demand justice for Colorado women. Tell them to vote “No” on this bill, which is a partial step toward completely outlawing abortion in Colorado. http://www.leg.state.co.us/cli…
Also, save the Date: March Against the War on Women, April 28th, 2012, at the Denver Capitol.
“undue burden” on a woman seeking an abortion.
I don’t really know how the rec list works, but I almost fell over when I saw the number of comments. Seems this story was picked up nationally. I hope Representative Kagan didn’t mind me borrowing his facebook quote after 1 a.m. (I was waiting to hear how the vote went).
In the future, though, I would explicitly suggest only asking Colorado residents to contact legislators. You could actually have some Repugs claiming victim if you have thousands of Kosters jamming their phone lines.
OTOH, maybe fuck ’em. 🙂
Have sent this to all my contacts.
Just hanging on for news when I read Kagan’s message on facebook about 1am. I admire Daniel for leaving the floor and letting Coloradans know immediately.
This vote took place at about 3 in the afternoon on Friday.
Unlike Lundberg who uses his electronics during Senate hearings http://www.coloradopols.com/di… Kagan actually pays attention while at work. I’m good with the fact he doesn’t use facebook until he gets home.
(I received a funny email from someone who works at the Capitol who claims Balmer spends a lot of time looking at dog pictures. His voting record is not impressive to this liberal, but no one can say that guy isn’t crazy about his dogs.)
Did he leave the floor to post immediately or did he wait till the day was over?
When I wrote the first part, I thought it was passed in the evening. I stand corrected — Kagan obviously finished his legislative day before going home and updating his facebook page to let us know how the vote turned out. I do appreciate he let his followers know when he got home.
If it passed on Second Reading, a voice vote, that means the leadership wants it to pass. Third reading is a gimmee.
It’s a waste of time writing Representatives. Write Senators instead.
to bombard the governor. I don’t think he would sign it but he needs to hear from 100,000 people and the nation needs to know
The Senate is the firewall on this. Get in touch with your senator, no matter his/her party, and unloose a shitstorm.
And go out and work for the Dem running for the House in your district, so we don’t have to keep going through this crap.
“Don’t you dare”, which I think they will. We should contact everyone we can — Reps, Senators, the media, and the Governor.
If a woman commits a homicide (terminates a pregnancy), does she get jail time or the death penalty?
I mean, I am sure we’re not going to convict physicians for practicing medicine are we. But the eve-il women…they need to be controlled.
Does there have to be intent? I.e., what if a woman does not know she has conceived, and yet the pregnancy terminates …is that manslaughter or is still homicide?
What if a woman has something like buyer’s remorse? She decides to terminate a pregnancy with her doctor’s assistance and then changes her mind.
Does a fertilized egg frozen in storage at one of the Colroado cryobanks get the same protection?
Speaking of buyer’s remorse, could a convicted rapist bring an action against his victim when she terminates the pregnancy he gifted to her?
I just don’t understand whatinhellisgoingon.
are a distraction so that we don’t pay attention to, or completely miss, more important matters going on right under our noses.
there is nothing more important.
That peoples’ lives will be so very negatively impacted by this pure, unadulterated chicanery doesn’t even come into their calculations.
The jaw dropping callousness with which these republicans drag society through these totally fabricated “issues” is sickening.
Szabo’s my Rep, and she’s a co sponsor. She’s a weird sort of religious zealot and a “true believer”, and might even come close to kind of actually thinking a macabre piece of legislation like this is sorta, maybe legitimate, but deep down inside, surely she knows she goes too far.
And yes. This is a ruse. A feint. And that these people are so low, such bottom feeders to do this, speaks volumes about their “christian values”
Disgusting.
We Democrats must come together in November and deliver an ass kicking to these charlatans and cons they’ll never recover from.
I don’t know anymore. Not just her, but too often I think we believe that they just couldn’t be serious. But often they are.
So before I decided to get all angry I read the bill (Here’s a link to the PDF of the bill).
This bill is stupid. It wants to do what is already done except with more words. It’s like saying 3+2 instead of 5. We already have a law in place prosecuting criminal abortions and it’s really simple!
Article 18-6-102. Criminal abortion.
That’s it! It’s simple. Why muck it up?
There is no way this bill will cause a woman to be charged for getting an abortion or taking the morning after bill. From the bill…
The only way I see it maybe conferring personhood is the title of the article they wish to create “Offenses Against Pregnant Women and Their Unborn Children”. Why does it have to say “and Their Unborn Children”? It’s like saying someone is fat and overweight or dead and not breathing. If it’s not just wordiness, then there’s some explaining to do.
I don’t like the “Vehicular unlawful termination of pregnancy” idea because (1) it sounds hard to prove and fairly easy to defend and (2) I picture a happy expecting couple getting into an accident with dad-to-be driving. Then I picture dad-to-be’s grief when the accident causes a miscarriage and he gets slapped with a class 4 felony on top of it.
The only part that makes sense to me is changing criminal abortions from a class 4 to a class 3 felony. The rest of the bill is useless garbage.
MADCO’s question above . . .
is . . .
that is precisely who this “law” is intended to
convictintimidate. Hell, you don’t even have to convict ’em, just threaten them with the prospect of having their license (or their insurance) revoked . . . and voila’* . . . problem solved!(*OK, I know that know self-respecting GOPer . . . ha ha . . . is going to use a furrener language . . . especially surrender-monkey french . . . that’s just my little Sunday-morning joke.)
How about rewriting that to say …
No woman may be prosecuted for intentionally terminating her own pregnancy.
Death panels.
It looks like I was reading the bill as it was introduced and not how it exists now.
Here’s a link to bill as it exists now…I think.
It has less words than the original bill, but has added more stupid. The new version basically says that if you break any law regarding a vehicle or traffic in the state of Colorado and it causes a pregnancy to terminate then you can be charged with homicide or assault.
I am picturing the ridiculous new stories now “Jane Doe was almost hit by a car while jaywalking yesterday. She barely escaped with her life by diving out of the way. Jane was pregnant and her injuries she sustained by diving out of the way caused her pregnancy to be terminated. She will be tried on homicide charges next week.”
The bill is HB12-1130. Nancy should have posted the bill number in her original post.
Most of us know how to find bills. If you click the bill number in the leftmost column, you get the current amended version.
This and other versions of the same idea have been floated in the General Assembly at least since this incident:
http://www.gjfreepress.com/art…
Maybe longer.
IMHO, it will meet with the same fate as Ted Harvey’s bill SB12-125. PI’d in Senate Judiciary.
You are correct. I should have included the bill number.
Somehow I had an extra quote in the link. Here’s the real link: http://www.leg.state.co.us/CLICS/CLICS2012A/csl.nsf/fsbillcont3/B2C357AC24743FFA87257981007F18F3?Open&file=1130_eng.pdf
URLs copied from the legislature’s web site are problematic. Sometimes there’s a session ID embedded in them.
Better to just cite the bill number and point to the main legislative web site.
I say that as someone who has been burned before. More than once.
over the anti-contraception and anti-choice bills. Here’s an LTE from a woman I know. Jean is one of many Republican women helping us with the Unite Against the War on Women March on April 28th. Well done, Jean! http://blogs.denverpost.com/el…