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The state coalition that fought against the 2008 “personhood” ballot initiative, which would have recognized fertilized human eggs as people and basically was an attempt to ban abortion, is ready for round two.
Senior Vice President of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Leslie Durgin, speaking for Protect Families, Protect Choices, calls the Personhood USA-backed proposed amendment “bad policy, bad law, and bad medicine.”
Less than two years ago, more than 70 percent of Colorado voters opposed a similar attempt to give full legal rights to fertilized human eggs, according to The Colorado Independent. And when the proposal made the ballot, even several anti-abortion Republican leaders distanced themselves from it or opposed the idea because they said it went too far, notes the Grand Junction Sentinel.
That doesn’t seem to be the case this time around. All of the top GOP candidates running for U.S. Senate and governor say they support a ballot question that would declare that life begins at conception, making abortion illegal.
ColoradoPols offers some biting criticism of Republicans who embrace the measure, writing, “We know some of you are quite taken with the notion that all these GOP electioneering standbys are going to work brilliantly this time, like rolling back the clock to 1994. We’re not in the same environment as 2008, true enough, but to seriously believe the electorate has transformed in two years from 71 percent against to anything remotely close to in favor of a radical abortion ban–meaning a situation that helps Republican candidates more than it hurts–is pure faddish delusion.”