Vote No on Amendment 48

This Anti-Woman, Anti-Choice initiative will be on the Colorado ballot in November. Proponents of this would define a fertilized egg as a “person” in the Colorado constitution in sections 3, 6 and 25 of the Colorado Bill of Rights. The so-called “Personhood Amendment” wants to establish a way to ban all abortion.

It’s offenses are manifold. As Friedman grimly chronicles, this bill is not just anti-abortion, but anti-contraception; it will disproportionately effect young women, women of color, incarcerated women, and low-income women; it advances fetal rights over women’s rights and it misleadingly co-opts feminist language. (The group backing the amendment is called Colorado for Equal Rights.) Amendment 48 not only bans all abortions in every instance–even in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman is at risk–it also threatens stem cell research and in vitro fertilization, compromises the doctor-patient relationship, and deprives access to common hormonal birth control methods (i.e. the pill and IUD), and to emergency contraception for rape and incest victims.

Femisting.com has also compiled extensive research on this amendment. This is one of the facts they uncovered.



Fetal (or in this case, even embryonic) “rights” trumping women’s rights? Check. The amendment would officially change the definition of “person” to include “any human being from the moment of fertilization,” therefore endowing all embryos in the state (whether they’re implanted in a woman’s body or not) with “inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law.”

What is unclear: would this initiative mean Colorado women who face an ectopic pregnancy would need government approval before the life-threatening pregnancy is removed? Also, would this initiative open the door for criminal investigations into miscarriages or situations where a woman’s body rejected implantation of a fertilized egg? What makes matters even worse, is that the group pushing Amendment 48 includes some right-wing funders, who aren’t even from Colorado. They are using Colorado to see how far they can push their agenda. I want to help them spread the word to fight this horrible amendment and raise awareness of the ramifications of such ludicrous legislation.

(H/T TheNation)

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