October 11, 2023 10:48 AM UTC

"There Is No Federal Personhood Bill:" Jim Jordan Proposed the Abortion Ban that Gardner Said Didn't Exist

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• by: Jason Salzman

(Numquam obliviscere, commemora semper — Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) most memorable connection to Colorado politics may be his under-the-radar and unintended cameo role in Colorado’s 2014 U.S. Senate race.

Jordan, who’s a top candidate for U.S. House speaker, was the sponsor of a proposed abortion ban that then-Congressman Cory Garder (R-CO), who was running for a Colorado U.S. Senate seat, insisted did not exist.

Under attack during the 2014 Senate race from incumbent Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) for his endorsement of a proposed “personhood” abortion ban in Colorado, Gardner suddenly un-endorsed Colorado’s personhood measure, telling The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels in March of 2014 that he changed his mind.

But it turned out that Gardner was a co-sponsor of a federal personhood bill, called the Life at Conception Act, which was sponsored by Jordan.

Asked about Jordan’s legislation at the time, Gardner repeatedly said, “There is no federal personhood bill.”

Multiple reporters pointed out to Gardner that there was such a bill, and Gardner was listed as a co-sponsor of it. Listen to Gardner deny the existence of the federal personhood bill below.

In one of the weirdest examples of the inability of journalists, try as they might, to extract the truth from a political candidate, Gardner never admitted that the federal personhood bill existed. He went on to defeat Udall and serve one term in the U.S. Senate, losing in 2020 to Democrat John Hickenlooper.

This year, two Colorado members of Congress — Republicans Doug Lamborn and Lauren Boebert — backed a resolution that’s identical in intent to Jordan and Gardner’s Life at Conception Act. The measure, House Resolution 464, acknowledges that “unborn children are legal and constitutional persons who are entitled to the equal protection of the laws.” Lamborn sponsored the resolution, which was not co-sponored by Jordan.

Jordan also isn’t listed as a co-sponsor of this year’s Life at Conception Act, which is verbatim identical to the version Jordan sponsored in 2013-2014. But Colorado’s three Republican members of Congress, Boebert, Lamborn, and Ken Buck, are co-sponsors of the bill.

A call to Jordan’s office to find out why he’s not a co-sponsor of this year’s Life at Conception Act was not returned.

Jordan’s 2013 legislation and the 2023 Life at Conception Act call for the complete banishment of abortion and would subject patients who get abortions and doctors who provide abortion care to murder charges. Similar abortion bans have been introduced in multiple states, including Colorado. Lamborn’s 2023 resolution differs insofar as it explicitly states that it doesn’t call for the “prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child.”