If At First You Don't Succeed...

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by: Colorado Pols

Two anti-abortion groups, Colorado Right to Life and Personhood USA, will submit a new “personhood” initiative to the Colorado Legislative Council on Thursday in hopes of getting a measure on the 2010 state ballot.

Colorado voters soundly defeated a similar measure, Amendment 48, in the 2008 election.

But initiative sponsors say things will be different in 2010 because they will be better-funded and better able to articulate their message and will introduce a measure that’s more accurately worded.

“The fact that we got over half a million Coloradans to vote for personhood in 2008 shows us that people care about ensuring that all humans are protected under the law,” said Gualberto Garcia Jones, director of Personhood Colorado, an arm of the national Denver-based organization Personhood USA.

Last year, 73 percent of the vote went against Amendment 48, which was sponsored by Colorado for Equal Rights. Kristi Burton, a 21-year-old student from Peyton, ran the organization.

Compared with its opponent, Colorado for Equal Rights was poorly funded, raising about a third of what the anti-48 group was able to amass.

Jones said that if the initiative gets on the 2010 ballot, funding will be stronger because of the national reach of Personhood USA, formed specifically to help anti-abortion groups throughout the nation get personhood amendments on their state ballots.

Most people agree that Amendment 48 goaded out more inactive voters to vote against it than it helped turn out the Republican vote, to the extent that anybody cared about it at all.

Which is funny because when these abortion/anti-gay/sheep wedding wedge-issue initiatives were originally conceived, their intent was first and moremost to ensure strong conservative turnout at the polls regardless of whether they actually passed. But like so many “culture war” misfires that have marked the GOP’s unsteady footing over the last few years, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. In fact, the hard-line pro life activists pushing Amendment 48 went so far as to attack top-line Republican candidates who didn’t immediately endorse its nutty provisions.

Democrats, we suspect, would be delighted to accomodate a 2010 redux.

11 thoughts on “If At First You Don’t Succeed…”

UglyAmerican says:

June 30, 2009 at 10:00 pm

Every dollar spent to fight this crap is a dollar that could be used to promote the health and well-being of women of reproductive age.

Personhood USA = Taliban USA

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1. Gecko says:
  
  June 30, 2009 at 11:08 pm
  
  They do? Really?
  
  So the millions upon millions of people that think it is wrong to suck a fetus into a sink when there are millions of couples wanting to adopt, these people hate women? And the ones that relish in killing the same fetuses, they are smart, bright, and noble?
  
  I guess I didn’t know those people were members of the Taliban. Oh silly me.
  
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  1. Phoenix Rising says:
    
    June 30, 2009 at 11:21 pm
    
    I think this state has reached the point where it’s obvious that we don’t want this type of law.
    
    At what point does the anti-abortion crowd pull up and say “we are harming babies by wasting this money in pointless initiatives”? At what point will the people failing in every state of the union to enact these inane laws get their noses out of their prayer books and say “we can save lives through better education, law enforcement, and health care”?
    
    The answer, of course, is “never”. The people and principles behind A48 aren’t just about abortion – they’re about birth control and sex education, too. They’re the same crowd that preaches that wives should be subservient to their husbands and who are one step removed from stoning women who have sex outside of marriage. They’re the ones who cry “harlot”, “whore”, and “slut” and are the first to say that welfare mothers just have kids so that they can have more drug money, all the while wanting nothing done about it.
    
    “They” won’t say they hate women. They’ll say they’re doing it for the good of women and society as a whole. The Taliban thinks the same of its actions – so do most other extremist groups of every stripe. That doesn’t make them right.
    
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    1. DavidThi808 says:
      
      July 1, 2009 at 6:50 am
      
      I disagree with what they are trying to do and they tend to write initiatives that are disengenuous. But we are a democracy and we have the initiative. As such, it is the right of every group to put whatever they want on the ballot.
      
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      1. Phoenix Rising says:
        
        July 1, 2009 at 7:36 am
        
        If you manage to lose by more than 2/3, you can’t re-petition on substantially the same question again for at least 4 years. Tweaking isn’t enough.
        
        This is, of course, in my dream world where the boils of the political world don’t keep returning like a bad disease.
        
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        DavidThi808 says:
        
        July 1, 2009 at 4:07 pm
        
        amendments must pass by 60%, and then pass again 2 years later by 60%.
        
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        Phoenix Rising says:
        
        July 1, 2009 at 5:20 pm
        
        And a host of others we’ve discussed here in the past.
        
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  2. RedGreen says:
    
    June 30, 2009 at 11:38 pm
    
    You’re right, it’s really up to the state to decide whether a woman should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term because other couples want to adopt it. She’s pregnant, she can’t be trusted to make up her own mind. Thank God for self-righteous zealots who know her body is but a vessel for adoption agencies.
    
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  3. DaftPunk says:
    
    July 1, 2009 at 12:57 am
    
    Then let them propose such an initiative.
    
    Personhood would needlessly insert the government, courts, and lawyers into the personal private relationship between doctors and patients.
    
    It would impact everything from birth control to infertility and cancer treatment in reproductive age women.
    
    It will require the pro-choice side to once again fundraise millions of dollars to defeat it which could be better spent on preventing unplanned pregnancies or facilitating adoption.
    
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    1. RedGreen says:
      
      July 1, 2009 at 1:24 am
      
      Isn’t that kind of their goal?
      
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Gilpin Guy says:

July 1, 2009 at 1:24 am

Kind of like the millions and millions the Mormon Church burned up defeating the right of two people to live together. Wouldn’t want that marketing money to be spent on things like food and clothing for the poor. “Must spend millions and millions to get my head handed to me on election day”.

The problem is that once these things get defeated multiple times, they carry the stink of loser with them. It is a powerful stink like people start getting ticked off at having to say no again and again.

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