A resurgent movement to place "personhood" measures on state ballots across the nation to ban abortion and comprehensive reproductive care could have far sweeping implications.

Wendy Norris is a freelance writer from Denver, Colorado. Her work can also be read at the public policy blog, Unbossed.com. She will be covering the "egg-as-person" movement for Rewire in the coming months. Other posts on on this issue today include a piece by Lynn Paltrow, and this cartoon. A list of past articles on this issue can be found at the end of this post.

DENVER – A resurgent movement to place

"personhood" measures on state ballots across the nation to ban

abortion and comprehensive reproductive care could have far more sweeping

implications than the trial balloon Colorado voters soundly defeated last year.

Far from being dissuaded by the 3-to-1 loss from their 2008

campaign to confer zygotes with legal rights, abortion opponents are regrouping

with a broader initiative that purports to address life span issues, from

conception to death.

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The proposed 2010 constitutional ballot language – "the

term ‘person’ shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the

biological development of that human being" – was submitted Thursday for initial

review by the Colorado Legislative Council.

The new tack avoids previous efforts to redefine person as

"any human being from the moment of

fertilization" – phrasing that rankled even its supporters as too

polarizing.

Shaded beneath the state capitol’s famed golden dome and

cradling his 10-day-old son, Gualberto Garcia Jones, 31, said announcing the

new campaign:

"And the important thing to

keep in mind, if you honestly and unbiasedly read the language – this is about

the full spectrum of human development. It includes the very early stages.

But it’s also about children who

are born with disabilities and are stripped of their personhood. It’s about

handicapped people who are stripped of their personhood. It’s about the elderly

that are dying and who lose their personhood when they go into some form of a

vegetative state."

When asked how such a wide-ranging law could be implemented,

Jones, a lawyer and former legislative analyst for the anti-abortion group,

American Life League, said:

"We’ll leave it to the courts

to interpret the language of the proposed amendment … We have faith that our

legislators will be able to implement this in a consistent manner with respect

for all human beings regardless of how they come about in their creation."

Last year’s ballot opponents claimed that adding a

religiously-inspired definition to the Colorado constitution would affect

more than 20,000 references to the term "person" in local and state

statutes.

A new,

all-encompassing "personhood" strategy

This new hard-line rhetorical stance is a radically

different approach than the 2008 campaign, headed by Peyton, Colo., resident

Kristi Burton, a telegenic online law school student, who furiously back-peddled

from controversial early campaign statements that Amendment 48 sought to

outright ban abortion and contraception.

Now, all bets are off. The new campaign leadership assured

supporters that Burton will advise the team but her "muddled"

communication goals won’t be repeated.

Jones, a conservative Catholic, said he welcomed a debate

about a contraception ban as an effect of the personhood cause:

"What this amendment does is

protect all human beings," he said. "Something that is erroneously

referred to as contraception causes the early human to die because they cannot

develop in the uterus. And, then yeah, this would prohibit it. We’re more than

happy to talk about that."

The conflation of contraception with abortifacients is a

well-used tactic by those who oppose abortion under all circumstances.

Combining the orthodoxy of hard-line opposition to

comprehensive reproductive care with controversial end-of-life issues is a new

strategy in the "personhood" movement that could be designed to

appeal to the fast-growing voting bloc of religious Hispanics, whom Jones, a

native of Spain, expressed particular interest in reaching out to.

The new strategic approach also appears to stem from a

chance encounter amidst the spectacle of one family’s personal tragedy turned

national political sideshow.

Jones met long-time Colorado Right to Life activist Leslie

Hanks in March 2005 while protesting at the Florida hospice where Terri

Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman at the center of a fierce right-to-die court

battle, re-ignited the social conservative movement.

Jones and Hanks struck up a friendship. Later, he moved to

Denver after leaving ALL to work on a 2006 South Dakota abortion ban campaign

and then a low-profile campaign job to help Burton pass Amendment 48. While Hanks

had a prominent public role, opponents of the 2008 effort do not recall seeing

Jones on the stump until now.

Absolutist

anti-abortion groups join forces

The 2010 campaign will be backed by Personhood USA, a new

national nonprofit organization formed from the ashes of Burton’s Colorado for

Equal Rights, whose supporters were linked to militant anti-abortion groups,

like the Army of God.

The Denver-based Personhood USA is headed by former Wichita resident and ex-Operation Rescue "truth

truck" driver Keith Mason, and Michigan

anti-abortion activist Cal Zastrow. Veterans of the failed Colorado campaign,

the two men most recently were involved in the unsuccessful 2008 South Dakota

citizen-initiated abortion ban and failed legislative actions in Montana and

North Dakota earlier this spring.

Now they have plans to deploy platoons of

"personhood" activists in 17 states to effectively ban abortion,

oral/device contraception, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem cell

research should they prevail to win civil rights for fertilized eggs. And if

Jones’ press briefing comments are any indication, they may take on disability

advocacy groups and the burgeoning end-of-life care movement, as well.

In addition to Colorado, a 2010 "personhood"

initiative in Montana was launched July 1 under the same auspices of broader

language though the speech-making to introduce the campaign did not use the

same anti-contraception and life span rhetorical flourishes employed by Jones.

Schisms continue over

religious support for "personhood" and litmus tests

Mason noted that the local campaign counts among its

supporters Jones’ former employer, the American Life League, and Hanks’ group Colorado

Right to Life, whose long-standing feud with Focus on the Family founder James

Dobson for not being anti-abortion enough is the stuff of local legend.

Jones will head the Colorado affiliate of Personhood USA.

Mason dismissed any lingering flack between Focus and American

Right to Life Action, another backer of "personhood" strategies, whose members

were arrested and jailed after failing to pay a trespassing fine following

the group’s Sept. 4 sit-in protest at the evangelical Christian ministry and

publishing empire’s Colorado Springs headquarters. He anticipates Focus will

again be on board with the new campaign. "They’re bigger than that,"

he said "They’ll do the right thing."

But not everyone in the faith community is enthusiastic

about the proposal and some will continue to oppose it.

The Colorado Catholic Conference refused to endorse the

2008 measure over concerns about "the timing and content." A

spokeswoman for the state’s three Catholic bishops, well-known for their

conservative social stances and willingness to insert themselves into political

controversy, told the Denver Post that Amendment 48 backers "seriously

misrepresented" the church, contradicting campaign claims that the

bishops officially supported the cause.

Jeremy Shaver, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance

of Colorado which participated in the "No on 48" campaign

unequivocally stated his group’s opposition to the renewed

"personhood" effort:

"My

understanding of what they’re trying to do is insert a particular religious

definition of life in the state constitution," said Shaver. "Many

people of faith don’t believe state law should be based on religious doctrine

or religious belief. We need to base our state law on what’s in the interest of

the common good.

"We

believe it’s a violation of religious freedom for all Coloradans and it’s a

danger to do so."

Shaver said he is especially troubled by the new life span

argument:

"End of life decisions are

also among the most personal decisions that we will make. Those decisions need

to be made personally by individuals and their families and cannot and should

not be made for us by politicians who seek to impose a religious agenda."

Unflagged, the "personhood" proponents soldier on

while its advocates continue to grapple with the practicalities of the cause.

In a telling 2008 Q&A exchange, on the conservative

religious television network EWTN Kids Web page, the American Life League’s

Judie Brown admits the legal murkiness of "personhood" to a

reader questioning whether to impose capital felony sentences on abortion

providers and women patients or merely misdemeanor penalties:

Once

personhood is restored to all human beings prior to birth, we will have to wade

through the minefield of criminal penalties and how they should be applied …

Gualberto Garcia Jones points out, "Criminal law is almost always about

knowledge."