Colorado Abortionists Launch Campaign against Personhood Ballot Initiative

DENVER, Colorado, September 3, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion medical practitioners this week kicked off a campaign to snuff out the Colorado Personhood initiative, which aims to extend personhood to all human beings from the beginning of their biological development, as it heads to voters in November.

Amendment 62, which has been certified for Colorado's ballot once again after a failed attempt in 2008, has drawn vitriol from abortion groups eager to dismiss embryonic human life as "fertilized eggs" unworthy of the dignity of personhood.

A No on 62 rally drew about 100 abortion advocates to the steps of state Capitol on Tuesday, and was backed by Colorado Medical Society. The group, which has vowed to raise $1 million to fight the personhood initiative, has recycled yard signs and other campaign paraphernalia from the first personhood attempt in 2008.

While even the U.S. federal government has acknowledged that embryos are human beings at the earliest stage of development, opponents dismissed the lives the amendment aims to protect with dehumanizing terms.

"[Amendment 62] is a sneaky attempt to provide constitutional and legal rights to a fertilized egg," said Fofi Mendez, campaign director for the No on 62 Campaign, according to CBS 4 Denver.

Vicki Cowart of Planned Parenthood warned the crowd that the amendment was "dangerous" because of the threat it poses to abortion availability; Rev. Dawn Riley Duval of the African Methodist Episcopal Church insisted that the "deeply personal and painful moral decision" to kill an unborn child "is best left to a woman and her doctor, and God," reported KWGN Denver.

But the abortion lobby's reaction, says Personhood USA leader Keith Mason, betrays their fear that public recognition of the dignity of the tiniest human lives would ruin the lucrative abortion business.

"The biggest funder of the opposition's funder is Planned Parenthood, which in Colorado brings in $365 million a year - and they would stand to lose the majority of that, because they are the number one abortion provider," Mason told LifeSiteNews.com Thursday afternoon.

"This would hinder their business big time."

Mason said that he was concentrating on the Colorado campaign not only because Amendment 62 is the only pro-life law on any ballot in the country this November - "Colorado is critical," he noted - but because of the favorable political climate heading into the election season this year.

"This is the best environment to pass any pro-life law in a generation, from my perspective. We are leaps and bounds ahead of where we were last time by this point," he said. "Our volunteer base is just hungrier than ever to get the word out and get this thing passed."

Mason noted that primary results, which favored GOP hopefuls such as state senate candidate and personhood supporter Ken Buck, indicated that conservatives in the state were fired up to vote for issues close to their heart this time around. Buck is now holding the lead against Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet, according to an August 29 Rasmussen Reports survey.

"Politically speaking, we're looking at a 20-23 point swing in the type of voter that's coming up to vote this year, just based on the primary," he said. "With the strength of the tea party forcing these issues, we're right in line with all these conservatives coming out to vote."

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