Pro-Life Measure Voted Down in Colo.
Colorado voters on Tuesday rejected what was said to be the nation's only pro-life amendment.
Personhood Amendment 62, which would have given human rights to the unborn, was defeated by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. This is the second time the pro-life measure was voted down.
"Tonight's victory sends a strong message that Colorado is a pro-choice state," Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Monica McCafferty told The Colorado Independent.
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After a failed attempt in 2008, "pro-life missionaries" and volunteers were optimistic this time around as they mobilized churches and the pro-life faithful. Language was also altered to define "person" to include "every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being" as opposed to "any human being from the moment of fertilization."
Opponents criticized the amendment, saying it would not only outlaw abortions but also ban emergency contraception that interferes with the implantation of a fertilized egg as well as embryonic stem cell research.
But proponents of Amendment 62 pointed to the approximately 20,000 deaths through surgical abortion that occur every year in Colorado. Tens of thousands more are killed through chemical abortions and research, said Personhood Colorado Director Gualberto Garcia Jones.
"Twenty-thousand people is enough to fill the Pepsi Center. Twenty-thousand people with little arms and legs, eyes and ears, eyelashes and fingernails, and rapidly beating hearts are exterminated," he wrote in an earlier commentary.
"Amendment 62 stands for the revolutionary ... proposition that all human beings are created equal and are endowed by their Creator, not the government or the Supreme Court, with inalienable rights such as the right to life, due process of law, and equality of justice," he said. "Amendment 62 loves all human life with a wild abandon; the opposition loves power of the developed over the developing human being with a fierce defiance of science, reason and humanitarianism."
The measure was endorsed by Pam Tebow, mother of NFL rookie quarterback Tim Tebow.
"A child's right to life begins at conception, not at birth," stated Pam, who had been pressured to have an abortion by her doctor when she was pregnant with Tim.
Amendment 62 was the only pro-life law on the 2010 ballot in the nation, according to Personhood Colorado. Meanwhile, signatures are being collected in other states, including Florida, to get a personhood measure on a future ballot.
