8mm
Posted on 11/13/2007 5:00:44 PM PST by mdittmar
The Colorado Supreme Court today released a decision giving proponents the go-ahead for a ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution in 2008 to define personhood as a fertilized egg.
Opponents of the measure, which would lay the constitutional foundation for making abortion illegal in the state, asked the court to reject the ballot title as misleading to voters.
The court ruled that the measure's wording is clear and meets state requirements in terms of covering a single subject.
The measure, if approved by voters, would extend constitutional protection from the moment of conception with regard to rights of life, liberty, equality of justice and due process of law.
The group pushing the measure, Colorado for Equal Rights, can now begin gathering the 76,000 signatures required to put the issue on the November 2008 ballot.
Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains is one of the reproductive-rights groups opposing the measure, which it said in a statement would have sweeping consequences for women using contraception to prevent pregnancy as well as for couples using in-vitro fertilization to start families.
Planned Parenthood has called the ballot initiative "deceptive and dangerous."
I never ever thought of Colorado as being a hotbed of Conservative activism, but I was obviously wrong.
Way to go, Colorado!
I live here. Where do I sign?
Involuntary manslaughter for miscarriage is next.
Standby to standby.
There is a differnce in the natural death of a developing human being and the death caused by the hand of another person. Not that hard to understand.
I do not understand either of your posts,please elaborate.
I recently saw a few minutes of some sci-fi show on a cable channel. A current show, about which I know nothing. These people had landed on a planet with three suns. This is sometime in the distant future. Obviously, the planet is a desert. Two of the characters were dressed in turbans and flowing garments, and are talking about how Allah will provide water, etc. I can’t remember any futuristic sci-fi (other than “Dune”) in which current earthling religions have survived in any form into the 25th Century, or whenever this sci-fi series is set. The usual premise of sci-fi is that in the future, religion has withered away, due to the progress of science, and there is also no market economy: everyone is a uniformed employee of the State or the Federation, or whatever.
The implicit premise of this sci-fi series is that several centuries from now, all religions will have withered away—except the Religion of Peace!
>> disasterous unintended consequences... who was spotted eating a Twinkie
The goal is to save the unborn, not to avoid frivolous or agenda driven lawsuits.
I understand the intent; however, the "intent" of any statute is one of the first things thrown out by lawyers applying a 'living Constitution' analysis. Perhaps I didn't make my point clearly enough for you. According to the article, the bill "would extend constitutional protection from the moment of conception with regard to rights of life, liberty, equality of justice and due process of law." When there is a claimed necessity for those rights need to be enforced on behalf of persons unable to speak for themselves, such as the unborn, courts will appoint a lawyer to act on behalf of the voiceless. That lawyer's sole duty is to his client, in this case the unborn child, with NO regard for balancing others' rights (for example, the parents' rights). Calling those suits 'frivolous or agenda driven' merely labels them from your perspective while ignoring the fact that others will disagree and seek to enforce the "rights" that they think are correct. The merits of those lawsuits which would be in the hands of the lawyers and courts, not yours. Do you not know moonbat lawyers and judges?
Perhaps you are sanguine about another intrusion by the government into the rights of parents vs children, born or unborn. I am not comfortable with that approach. If the proposed initiative is intended to lay the groundwork for laws restricting or outlawing abortion, I think a better approach would be to address the specific issue of abortion, and not try a quasi-constitutional end-run by creating new classes of "persons" entitled to "rights," which themsleves would be newly-defined to meet the unique needs of this new class of the unborn. As a lawyer well acquainted with the legal thought process and the tools we employ, I see nothing but disaster in this initiative. Were I of the moonbat persuasion, I would be salivating at the opportunity to pursue this through the judicial system.
When someone loses a fetus to a preventable accident, trust me, we will start getting lawsuits in which such a tragedy will be considered either voluntary or involuntary manslaughter as a result.
Without this law, it has been more recently possible to hold others accountable to violence to women carrying a fetus.
This greatly expands the scope of that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_manslaughter
We didn’t think abortion could ever have been interpreted as “a right” until a court ruled it so.
All sorts of things thought ridiculous at one time are now legal.
Anyone for some sodomy? /end sarcasm
>> Perhaps you are sanguine about another intrusion by the government ... I am not ...
No need to be preachy and suggest I’m indifferent to Liberty. That’s quite a stretch given my rather inert remark.
The treatment of the unborn is subjective in the courts as one could legally kill the child through abortion and another prosecuted for man-slaughter or murder as the result of an assault on the woman carrying the child. The unborn is considered a ‘person’ in the latter case.
Again, I stated the ‘goal’ and not the ‘intent’. Your remarks address the potential abuse of such an initiative which would be far less harmful to the unborn than the act of an abortion. No less the politics that enable death by syringe can certainly come to the aid of those concerned with death by twinkie. I don’t find passage through the vaginal canal the determining characteristic that differentiates the life value of the unborn from that of the newborn. Why should “Life, liberty, equality of justice and the due process of law” be governed by the act of birthing? Are you saying that a 9 month prenatal is undeserving of the rights afforded to a newborn yet detached from its mother?
Personhood ping.
Sign up to carry a petition?
Sure enough!
Call Colorado Right to Life: 303-753-9394.
We’ll get you connected.
"A jubilant group of about 40 supporters, including anti-abortion leaders from across the country, gathered at the Timbers Hotel in northeast Denver to cheer the ruling. They believe passage of the measure could lead to the eventual overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
"The right to life is not a right that comes to us when we're born but when we're created," said GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes, who addressed the cheering group.
Absolutely not. But I AM saying that tangential means of achieving a desired end have the greatest potential for boomeranging and causing far more damage than good, especially with our courts as currently constituted. And sorry, I did not mean to sound preachy, and certainly did not mean to call into question your love of liberty.
Just please consider one example: the civil rights acts of the mid-60s. They explicitly state that discrimination based on race, etc., is impermissible...period, no exceptions, no ambiguous language. Moreover, the legislative history is replete with statements by the bills' sponsors that the laws could never result in, for example, reverse discrimination to redress historical discrimination - the legislative debate went into exhaustive detail on this very point. It took but one decision authored by Brennan in, IIRC, 1968, to read the clear mandates of the laws (and their stated goals, intent, and operation) completely out of existence. You see the result today everywhere you look...and I don't know your thoughts on the issue, but I perceive it to be an unmitigated...sorry to use this word yet again, but nothing else is strong enough...disaster. The purely "good" goals and intent of the law, and its clear statutory language, has been manipulated by the far left to engineer results completely at odds with its intent.
Please also consider that the same formal legal reasoning used in Brennan's opinion was employed by Blackmun in Roe v. Wade and the associated case, Doe v. Bolton, scant years later...resulting in the second Holocaust of the 20th century.
When considering legislation, deep analysis, well beyond thinking "it's the good and right thing to do, so let's do it" sort, must be applied. The mere use in the initiative of the legal term of art, "due process of law," sent shivers down my back - as much evil has marched under the banner of those three little words, under current judicial usage, more than I would think possible in a rational world. Utilising "bad" means to achieve a "good" end is NEVER wise - and in my estimation, this initiative is such a "bad" means because it is clearly foreseeable that it will result in unintended and highly negative consequences far afield from the stated goals.
I support the goal of protecting the unborn...but this is not the proper means to achieve that goal. I would rather say "Beware!" now than "I told you so!" later.
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