Colorado will define a person this election October 26th, 2008
As America votes to elect a new president on November 4, the state of Colorado will vote on how to “define a person”.
On the 4-page ballot paper in Colorado, is Amendment 48 of the Colorado constitution (the U.S. system allows voting on citizen-initiated laws on the same ballot, provided they have a certain number of signatures to support this). It asks Colorado whether they would want a “the terms person, or person, to include any human being from the moment of fertilisation.”
This is not a simple question. If the people answer yes, the implications are huge, says Curtis Miller a 52-year-old pastor. He and his traveling companions are going through the 2008 State Ballot Information Booklet as we approach Glenwood Springs through surreal canyons on a slow train.
If there is a place where you seek answers to the kind of deep questions on the Colorado ballot paper, you could do much worse.
Pastor Curtis, supports the amendment, of course. But he does give it a think. There are practical considerations. But finally, it boils down to: “Life is a gift. And you have to draw the line somewhere.” He is from Denver, but if you ask him, he’ll say: “I’m from the womb.”
If Colorado thinks the same way as the pastor, then abortions would have a different name in Colorado: murder. Because the state guarantees a “person” the right to life. It would also mean a reversal of one of the most important judgements in the U.S. Supreme Court’s history. In 1975, Roe v Wade, the U.S Supreme Court legalised abortion in the U.S, on the ground that the unborn were not included in the word “person” as used in the U.S. Constitution.
John McCain does not agree with that judgement, and Sarah Palin is even more stridently ‘pro-life’, she has a special needs baby to show for it. But Roe v Wade is hugely important, because it upheld the right of a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
A reversal could limit private, personal choices and could be used to stop the use of commonly used forms of contraception (the ‘day after pill’, for instance) and even hinder stem-cell research
Steve Levitt, economist and co-author of ‘Freakonomics’ wrote a jaw-dropping paper on the correlation between crime and unwanted births–subjects that seem unrelated. Levitt’s argument, based on hard data, was: if you force women who 1) do not want the child andS 2) have no means to support it, to be single moms, then you will get cascading waves of kids turning to crime.
Banning abortion would mean more such kids. Legalising, as the Supreme Court did in Roe v Wade, would reduce crime.
Few churches come out openly in support of on candidate or the other. But in almost all, preachers tell the congregation that they must vote according to a candidate’s Christian values: to check if they are pro-life, and support the biblical version of the birth of the earth (done in 7 days; Noah’s ark and so on, as opposed to evolution from “monkeys” or “cells”) to name just two of these values.
One of pastor Curt’s companions had filled out the Voter “cheat-sheet” for measures on the 2008 ballot. These are provided well before election day, so voters can get a bit of practice for what is a fairly lengthy exercise.
She hands me the booklet before hopping off at Glenwood Springs. I find that she’s ticked the yes box for amendment 48.
Tags: Abortion, Amendment 48, John McCain, Pro Choice, Pro Life, Roe v Wade, Sarah Palin, Steve Levitt, US Elections 2008, Voter cheat sheets
Posted in Article | Comments (1)
October 27th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
The advocates of Amendment 48 claim that a newly-created embryo — a single cell without any human attributes except DNA — is a human person with a right to life. They wish to force that view on everyone, whatever the costs. Consider:
* Amendment 48 would make abortion first-degree murder, except perhaps to save the woman’s life. First-degree murder is defined in Colorado law as deliberately causing the death of a “person,” a crime punished by life in prison or the death penalty. So women and their doctors would be punished with the severest possible penalty under law for terminating a pregnancy — even in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity.
* Amendment 48 would ban any form of birth control that might sometimes prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus — including the birth control pill, morning-after pill, and IUD. The result would be many more unintended pregnancies and unwanted children in Colorado.
* Amendment 48 would ban in vitro fertilization because the process usually creates more fertilized eggs than can be safely implanted in the womb. So every year, hundreds of Colorado couples would be denied the joy of a child of their own.
Amendment 48 has very sharp teeth. Yet such consequences seem to be of little concern to the advocates of Amendment 48. They think that the men and women of Colorado should be forced to sacrifice for the sake these new “persons” in the womb.
So we must ask: Is a fertilized egg a human person with a right to life? The only rational answer is “NO.”
An embryo or fetus is wholly dependent on the woman for its basic life-functions. It goes where she goes, eats what she eats, and breathes what she breathes. It lives as an extension of her body, contained within and dependent on her for its survival. It is only a potential person, not an actual person.
That situation changes radically at birth. The newborn baby exists as a distinct organism, separate from his mother. Although still very needy, he lives his own life. He is a person, and his life must be protected as a matter of right.
So when a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy she does not violate the rights of any person. Instead, she is properly exercising her own rights over her own body in pursuit of her own happiness.
For more information, visit: http://www.ColoradoVoteNo48.com
For a detailed analysis, see the issue paper “Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person” by Ari Armstrong and myself. It’s available at:
http://www.seculargovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf
The sad fact is that Amendment 48 is based on sectarian religious dogma, not objective science or philosophy. It is a blatant attempt to impose theocracy in America.
Please vote NO on 48!
Diana Hsieh
Founder, Coalition for Secular Government
http://www.seculargovernment.us