Colorado Supreme Court Permits Embryonic Personhood Ballot Measure

Pro-life human rights activists in Colorado may be on the verge of a major breakthrough in the struggle against the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. The group Colorado for Equal Rights received permission from a unanimous vote Tuesday in the state Supreme Court to begin collecting the signatures needed to bring forward a ballot initiative that would grant the status of legal personhood to the unborn.
 
An estimated 76,000 signatures are needed to put the issue to voters in the 2008 election. The ballot question would define personhood and legal protection for the unborn child as beginning at the moment of fertilization. Pro-life supporters have six months to collect the signatures.
 
The opportunity comes from a loophole in the Roe v. Wade decision written by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Blackmun wrote, "(If the) suggestion of personhood is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment."
 
The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, one of the post-Civil War amendments first intended to secure rights for former slaves, requires the states to provide equal protection under the law to all persons, not only to citizens, within their jurisdictions. It was instrumental in dismantling the system of racial segregation in the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and ‘60's. It stipulates, "No State…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
 
WorldNetDaily quotes John Archibold, a founder of Colorado Right to Life as well as National Right to Life, "Colorado, which regrettably was in the forefront of the movement to deny the right to life to millions of the unborn, has now taken the first step to restore the right to life to all Americans, regardless of age, dependency, national origin or condition."
 
Kristi Burton, a spokeswoman for Colorado for Equal Rights, said, "It has a really good chance. What we're doing is defining life, at the moment of fertilization that is a human being, that is a person."
 
"Our whole goal is to protect human life in general, at whatever age," she said. "I don't believe that approach has ever been tried in Colorado before."
 
Abortion supporters worried by the development did not fail to note that should it pass, the referendum would likely affect the destructive practices of in vitro fertilization and other artificial techniques of procreation. The feminist magazine MS. quotes Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, "This measure is far outside the mainstream of Colorado and voters will not support it."
 
Should pro-life advocates succeed in overturning Roe v. Wade, eleven states are poised to outlaw abortion with laws already on the books.
 
Burton, however, called the ballot measure a matter of principle. "It doesn't outlaw abortion, it doesn't regulate birth control…It's just a constitutional principle. We're laying a foundation that every life deserves protection…It's very clearly a single subject. If it's a human being, it's a person, and hey, they deserve equal rights under our law."