Posted on 03/24/2014 10:19:52 AM PDT by markomalley
Republican Colorado Rep. Cory Gardner, once an ardent supporter of “personhood” laws that define human life as beginning at the moment of conception, said he no longer supports them because they also restrict access to contraception.
Gardner made the statements to the Denver Post, calling efforts to add personhood amendments to Colorado’s Constitution in 2008 and 2010 “a bad idea driven by good intentions.”
“I was not right,” he told the paper. “I can’t support personhood now. I can’t support personhood going forward. To do it again would be a mistake.”
Gardner was once so supportive of the idea that he helped gather signatures at his church for its inclusion on the 2010 ballot. After the measure was defeated, he told the Post he began re-evaluating the issue.
“The fact that it restricts contraception, it was not the right position,” Gardner is quoted as saying. “I’ve learned to listen. I don’t get everything right the first time. There are far too many politicians out there who take the wrong position and stick with it and never admit that they should do something different.”
Gardner said he wanted to announce the change in his position to counter claims by incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, Gardner’s competitor in a tight race. Last week, Udall posted a message to his campaign website in which Udall warned that Gardner wants to “impose a narrow agenda on Colorado that isn’t the Colorado way.”
“If Gardner gets his way, abortion and some types of birth control would be considered crimes,” Udall wrote.
“Coloradans will see through this cheap election-year stunt,” Udall spokesman Chris Harris told the Post. “Gardner is showing a profound lack of respect for Colorado voters. Coloradans want a senator who always promotes and protects women’s health, not one who simply pretends to during election years.”
Gardner countered by telling the Post he expects to be labeled a flip-flopper on the issue, but said that Udall had also changed his position in the past, such as on the issue of same-sex marriage.
“It was perhaps best said by Mark Udall,” Gardner said, “who said a good-faith re-examination of a position you’ve held in the past should be seen as a virtue, not a vice.”
“The middle way is no way at all. If we finally fail in this great and glorious contest, it will be by bewildering ourselves in groping for the middle way.” - John Adams
And it begins...
Another 7 months of being told that we absolutely have to have back East controlled tyranny in order to preserve our precious right for under aged girls to get late term abortions in unapproved facilities without parental consent or any counseling.
But if you're talking about the morning after bill, that's not contra-ception, that's postconception abortion.
But if you're talking about the morning after bill, that's not contra-ception, that's postconception abortion.
What does he have to give up if he wants to be President?
This is a Chicago Machine attack piece.
Colorado is focused on Jobs, gun rights, energy and the environment.
Anything else is a waste of time or playing into the Rats hands.
He’s just another politician saying what he thinks will get him elected. Those types have no morals or character. They are the lukewarm water.
“I can’t support personhood now. I can’t support personhood going forward. To do it again would be a mistake.”
Oh, how very unwise.
There are some who argue the Pill and IUDs sometimes prevent pregnancy by preventing implantation not fertilization. So the argument is these personhood laws would ban those contraceptives.
So Gardner turns out to be a general in the Republican War on Women™ after all? Whoda thunkit?
This attack method by the RATs has yet to fail.
Many oral contraceptives really don't prevent conception. They prevent implantation of the fertilized egg in the mother's womb.
Hell in a hand basket.
My thoughts exactly. Contraception means before conception.
Than write in exceptions for these contraceptives. Let’s save the 99.99% of children actually affected by abortion and the lack of acceptance that an unborn child is not a person.
Not for the Governor, running for the US Senate.
Sounds Nazi-like, doesn’t it? Let the powers in charge decide who is a person...if the term Nazi offends, let’s try one that fits our land: how did the Democrats reckon blacks at the time of the creation of the Republican party?
As the Nazis considered the Jews as subhuman, so the Democrats looked at blacks as less than human.
The fact is that Christian men and women led the way to repeal the Democrat party’s love of slavery. And they did it via their churches and the Republican party.
I still think that 1st grade little girls would be more mature than many of the morons who slink around Washington stealing from the American tax payers and lining their own pockets.
So, now firmly in office, he can let his true self show?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.