As the New York Times first reported, the anti-poverty Catholic Campaign (CCHD) in February told Compañeros Executive Director Nicole Mosher that her group’s annual $30,000 grant was in jeopardy. Mosher told the Colorado Independent that a Catholic Campaign liaison in Pueblo explained the problem was that both Compañeros and gay-rights group One Colorado were affiliated with the wider Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. The coalition, which includes well more than 50 member organizations, has openly supported the rights of gay immigrants and has joined with One Colorado in championing the same-sex civil unions bill making its way through the Colorado legislature.

As the Colorado Independent recently reported, no one from the Catholic Campaign ever asked Compañeros about its stand on gay rights or about its ties to One Colorado. Mosher said the Campaign’s concerns seemed based on sources far removed from the reality of the work being done on the ground by her organization, which mostly concerns education on U.S. laws and shepherding immigrants and their families through courts, hospitals, schools and tax filings.

For Church watchers, the events in Colorado seemed to spotlight the way power is being wielded within the Church by non-clerical Catholic groups armed with internet connections and formed to champion hard-line positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.

An evangelical Catholicism

James Salt, executive director of liberal Catholic group Catholics United, told the Independent that the hunt for “100 percent orthodoxy,” as he put it, is altering the Church in the United States.

“There was once the feeling that our faith could move mountains and especially on behalf of the most-marginalized members of society,” he said. “But [Church leaders] have been pushed farther and farther rightward by these well-organized groups with narrow agendas.”

Salt said that the battle over the Catholic Campaign is an outgrowth of the rise of the Christian right in U.S. politics in the 1980s.

“The [Catholic] bishops were once seen as a prophetic voice on behalf of the poor. Now they’re known primarily as a voice on wedge issues. That all seems counter cultural to Catholics, more evangelical, more partisan, more politically motivated than spiritually motivated.”

The Catholic Campaign, founded in the 1960s with a progressive Vatican II-era mission to fight for social justice by attacking root causes of poverty, has been a ripe target for pressure. Conservative critics have accused its leaders of “working in direct contradiction to Church teaching” by awarding grants to organizations that “directly or through coalition membership have promoted abortion, birth control, homosexuality and/or Marxism,” according to a watchdog report brought out last fall by a coalition called Reform CCHD Now.

The Reform CCHD Now coalition was formed in 2009 and is led by Virginia-based anti-abortion groups American Life League and Human Life International, which registered the coalition’s internet domain name.

The coalition also includes smaller groups, such as Colorado Catholics for Personhood, a local chapter of the national movement to challenge Roe v Wade by passing laws around the country that would grant fertilized human eggs full legal rights.

The group is run by Gualberto Garcia Jones, who is also spokesman for the Personhood Colorado ballot initiative campaigns run this year and in 2010.

It’s unclear what role a group like Colorado Catholics for Personhood plays in the mission of Reform CCHD Now. Jones was traveling last week and unavailable to comment for this story.

Affiliation transgressions

Human Life International, founded in 1981, reports a presence in 100 countries around the world. Its activities include lobbying to outlaw abortion in the U.S. and abroad, organizing conferences and trainings and holding sidewalk counseling sessions outside abortion centers.

The main work of the coalition, however, seems to be carried out by the American Life League. The League was founded in 1979 and calls itself the “largest grassroots Catholic pro-life education organization” in the country. In the fall of 2010 and 2011, just before annual fundraising efforts launched for the Catholic Campaign, the League released watchdog reports on the Campaign’s grants. The 2011 report recommended the Campaign pull funding for roughly 54 of its 218 grantees. Compañeros was not included on that list.

Michael Hichborn, spokesman for both the American Life League and the Reform CCHD Now coalition, told the Independent that his groups had “nothing to do with the charges against Compañeros” and that it was “the local [Pueblo] diocese which made its own discoveries and drew its own conclusions” in the matter.

Yet, the American Life League’s watchdogging is clearly having an effect. As is the case with Compañeros, more than 40 of the organizations listed for defunding in the League’s 2011 report were targeted based on associations they maintain with larger coalitions.

Many of the groups made the list, for example, due to ties to the Center for Community Change, which the report authors explain “signed an open letter to President Obama and some members of Congress urging them to continue funding Planned Parenthood, is actively involved in the promotion of homosexuality and equates abortion rights with criminal justice.”

Critics told the Independent that the American Life League research lacks vital perspective and that it trades on guilt by association.

In the eyes of anti-abortion groups, for example, Planned Parenthood is recognized first and foremost as the largest abortion provider in the nation, but for anti-poverty groups, Planned Parenthood is seen primarily as the largest provider of vital health care to poor women coast to coast.

And, in the case of groups tied to the Center for Community Change, it’s unclear what’s more objectionable, a grantee’s association with the Center, or the Center’s association with Planned Parenthood, which in all of the cases listed in the American Life League report, is an association two steps removed from any grantee and one based on a single letter of support.

Salt characterized the American Life League’s research on the Catholic Campaign a lamentable product of the digital age.

“These far right groups can find any minuscule hint of a supposed transgression and use it as a point of attack,” he said.

Mosher said that, in the case of Compañeros, there would be no way to know from an internet search how thin are its ties to One Colorado, how remote are the workings of the organizations in day-to-day operations and how impractical it would be for Compañeros to try to control the membership of either the state’s immigrant rights coalition or of any other such coalition to which it might belong.

Hichborn, however, said that, in the matter of Compañeros, any talk about One Colorado and the role of Reform CCHD Now is a distraction.

In an email he wrote that, based on research he has conducted since the story broke, the problem likely was never One Colorado, it was that Companeros is a “founding member of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, which is itself actively promoting same-sex marriage, attending gay-pride parades, and promoting homosexuality in general; all of which is in direct conflict with immutable Catholic moral teaching.

“Companeros is so intimately linked with [the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition] that official actions taken by [the coalition] reflect extended actions by Companeros as well. By joining [the coalition] as a “member,” Companeros is participating in its actions.”

‘Open source analysis’

The likelihood that it was the Catholic Campaign which found fault with the Compañeros membership in the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition must be seen as progress for the reform movement.

Hounded by criticism, the Campaign underwent an intense “review and renewal” process in 2010 that ended in its adopting the language of its critics. The Ten Commitments reform program (pdf) that came out of the process aimed at developing “more specific ethical guidance to help the Bishops carry out [the Campaign’s] policy of prohibiting funding to groups which are part of coalitions that act in conflict with fundamental Catholic moral and social teaching.”

What’s more, Hichborn and the Reform coalition members make no apologies for their research methods. Indeed, defending them has been a large part of the coalition’s activities almost from its inception.

Two years ago the coalition launched attacks on John Carr, who oversees the Catholic Campaign as executive director of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development. Citing Carr’s work over the course of years for the Center for Community Change, the coalition alleged that the Conference of Catholic Bishops was engaged in a “systematic pattern of cooperation with evil.”

Carr told the sympathetic Catholic News Service that he stood by the work of the Center to address poverty and that he had no knowledge of any of its alleged “work to promote abortion and homosexuality.” He said that no one from the Reform coalition had contacted him before making the allegations.

Bishops rallied around Carr and denounced the accusations as internet smears.

“You can have one person with a website call you a left-wing radical, and [your] family is asking… ‘What’s going on?’” said Bishop Roger Morrin from Mississippi.

The coalition responded by explaining that it uses an “open source analysis” methodology “promulgated by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” In effect, that means the coalition researchers lean on internet searches but that they look for primary source documents authored by the organizations in question– public relations releases and letters, for example, like the one sent by the Center for Community Change to Washington lawmakers in support of Planned Parenthood.

At the American Life League website, Hichborn defended the criticism of Carr and the Catholic Campaign. He argued that the associations unearthed by coalition researchers, however loose, demonstrate the way the Campaign is compromising the integrity of the Church and its mission.

“As I have repeated since we began our investigation, [Campaign] staff and leadership are either incompetent or they are complicit. Whatever the case may be, there can be no doubt that the [Catholic Campaign] has completely failed its mission by sleeping with the enemy.”

That’s exactly the kind of harsh rhetoric Salt called “tone deaf” within a Catholic culture that reveres the mission taken on by men like Carr and the bishops guiding the Catholic Campaign.

Salt cited recent Pew Research Center data that suggests one third of Americans who were raised Catholic have left the Church. In fact, he believes the rising power of groups like Reform CCHD Now is both a cause and a result of the fact that Catholics raised with the Vatican II ideals are leaving the Church in droves.

“In the 1980s, you had these conservative commentators like George Weigel saying they wanted to turn the Church 180 degrees away from social justice. Well, they’re succeeding by using these divisive tactics, and it just drives people from the Church.”

[ Image: Reconstruction of the nave of the Domkerk in Utrecht via Paulus 2 at Wiki Commons. ]

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“Tonight’s victory sends a strong message that Colorado is a pro-choice state,” said Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Monica McCafferty. “Colorado trusts women, and we strongly want to uphold a woman’s constitutional right to privacy when it comes to reproductive health.”

The second try for the controversial ballot measure, Amendment 62 would have banned abortion, many forms of birth control and embryonic stem cell research in the state.

Personhood Colorado Director Gualberto Garcia Jones said he was not yet ready to comment, preferring to wait until all the votes are in.

No on 62 campaign spokeswoman Cara DeGette lauded the overall campaign effort and the intelligence of Colorado voters: “The campaign was so strong; the win is huge. Voters aren’t stupid.”

She added the second try at the amendment proved once and for all how Coloradans feel on matters of choice.

“What part of no don’t they understand? We voted this down two years ago and now we’ve done it again,” DeGette said.

A NO on 62 rally against the Personhood Amendment. (Photo by Joseph Boven)

And while Personhood USA Co-founder Keith Mason refused to comment for this article, Personhood Colorado Director Gualberto Garcia Jones and Fofi Mendez, campaign manager for the personhood opposition group No On 62, said Colorado is a tactical battleground for the issue in the country.

“I think that Colorado has been a battleground, in fact, we have been ground zero for Personhood USA’s attempt to get [personhood] passed in multiple states,” Mendez told the Colorado Independent.

Personhood USA states that it is a “grassroots Christian organization founded to establish personhood efforts across America to create protection for every child.”

Jones agreed that Colorado is a battleground state, but he said that’s true of a host of issues, including personhood. He pointed to a blend of “East Coast liberal values” and “Mid-West family values” found in the state as the cause and added that the campaign has learned lessons from Colorado it will carry on to other states.

Jones, who is also part of the leadership of Personhood USA, said the Colorado initiative has taught them that the key to a successful campaign is grassroots organizing.

“There is that idea of trickle-down economics; well, I think that this is like trickle up politics,” Jones said. “When you are formidable, politicians will come on board. Some will peel away, but most of them realize that their base is our people.”

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of American, told the Colorado Independent that her own organization was using similar tactics by working on the grassroots level in many states to ensure women’s rights are protected. “We take this very seriously. We want to send a message not only here but around the country that this is not supported by the American people.”

Monica McCafferty, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, agrees: “All affiliates that are facing personhood measures, we are in touch. We do have a strategy. We realize the opposition has a multi-year, multi-state plan, and we are going to fight it no matter what.”

That seriousness on both sides of the debate can be seen in donations from organizations with concerns that are as much local as they are national.

The No on 62 campaign has brought in close to $450,000 dollars to date, with Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains being the largest donor, according to Mendez. Still, Planned Parenthood affiliates in California gave early in the campaign to help jumpstart the coalition’s efforts.

“All of those Planned Parenthood affiliates, of course, recognize that they may be experiencing this at some point since Personhood USA has said that they want to bring this to every state in the nation,” Mendez said.

Secretary of State records show that as of July 15 the No on 62 campaign had brought in $45,020. Of that sum, $20,000 came from Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties in California, $5,000 from Planned Parenthood Advocacy Project/ LA County Action Fund, and $9,500 from other Planned Parenthood affiliates in California. The ACLU of Colorado gave $10,000.

Despite out-of-state contributions, Cara DeGette, spokeswoman for the No on 62 campaign, said the real “nuts and bolts organizing” to fight the initiative is occurring here in the state and is supported by a broad base of 58 organizations.

Personhood Colorado’s reports showed the issues committee had received $74,619.83 in contributions as of July 15. Of that total, $33,698.59 was in the form of non-monetary contributions from Personhood USA. A further $10,000 was donated by the national pro-life group the American Life League.

Jones said current Personhood Colorado donation figures had yet to be tallied but said the distribution of contributors was likely similar to those in past filings.

While similarly worded initiatives supported by Personhood USA failed to reach the ballot in Alaska, Nevada and Missouri, the group has lauded Colorado as a place where its grassroots and organizational efforts have pushed personhood onto the ballots and to the voters.

Erik Maulbetsch, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, however, pointed to other logistical reasons personhood will reach voters this year.

“Colorado has a low signature threshold for ballot initiatives to make changes to our constitution,” Maulbetsch said. “While this does allow small groups of zealots such as the so-called “personhood” proponents to place their dangerous initiative on our ballot, voters will once again reject this tired attempt to force extreme religious views into the Colorado Constitution.”

Jones in turn said if conservative gubernatorial candidates Republican Dan Maes and American Constitution Party Tom Tancredo’s supporters shows up to the polls in November, personhood should fair well.

Tuesday's NO on 62 rally against the Personhood Amendment. (Photo by Joseph Boven)

“Most forms of birth control aren’t included in this, so like the pill, condoms and other types of contraception that are commonly used aren’t included,” Loftus said.

“Ken believes life begins at conception, so he would oppose the morning after pill,” Loftus said. “But there have been several news organizations that have looked into this — especially with Michael Bennet’s commercial running — and they have said that it is just not true, that Ken does not favor getting rid of common forms of birth control because most of them don’t work that way.”

Bennet spokesman Trevor Kincaid said: “Michael opposes Amendment 62 because it contradicts both the rights of Colorado women and the will of Colorado voters. Personhood would ban the commonly used forms of birth control, as well as emergency contraception for rape victims.

“Unlike Ken Buck, Michael believes these decisions should be left to women, their families, and their doctor, not to politicians or the courts,” Kincaid said. “Colorado voters rejected a similar attempt to give legal rights to fertilized eggs by a three to one margin in 2008, and that vote should be respected.”

At a NO on 62, rally at the Capitol on Tuesday (see video below), opponents said lower socioeconomic groups could be hurt significantly if the Personhood Amendment passes and bans many forms of birth control, including the pill.

“Think of the impact of restrictions on emergency contraception and other forms of birth control for women and their families who are living in poverty,” said Rev. Dawn Riley Duval of African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).

Riley told the Colorado Independent that many families living in poverty do not have health insurance and are already struggling to put food on the table for current family members. She said removing many legal forms of birth control such as the pill would have catastrophic effects.

Representatives of the Personhood campaign have said that barrier forms of contraception will remain legal if the amendment passes. NO on 62 members do not disagree, but note that many common forms of birth control, including the pill, would likely be outlawed by Amendment 62.

The Mayo Clinic notes on its website that the pill, in its various forms, work by stopping ovulation, thickening cervical mucus and thinning the lining of the uterus.

Gualberto Garcia Jones, director of Personhood Colorado, told the Colorado Independent that he felt the populace should be informed that the drugs they are taking are stopping an egg from implanting in the uterine wall. He said while he is not against birth control, he is against any drug that stops the progression of biological development in such a way.

“We are pretty straight-forward. If there is a fertilized egg, if there is a zygote, an embryo, then anything that kills them should be considered a poison really, not a contraceptive,” Jones said.

Dr. Mary Fairbanks, a Colorado family physician, said: “[Although] regularly taking birth control often stops ovulation in the first place … it also thins the lining of the uterus, so those forms of birth control would be outlawed, and it is one of the most commonly used forms of birth control. To eliminate all of those in Colorado could lead to more unwanted pregnancies and more backroom abortions.”

Professor Paula England, a Stanford sociologist specializing in birth control , explained that women in lower socioeconomic groups often use contraception less frequently than those of higher socioeconomic status (SES). She said that this leads them to often have higher frequencies of unintended pregnancies, but she said it is likely there would be less impact on lower SES birth totals as compared to other groups if hormonal birth control was eliminated.

Studies have shown that early pregnancies can lead to a number of concerns for both the infant and the mother. The Center for Disease Control reported that teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of school and their children to remain more reliant on public health care or enter into the penal system.

“If the people who are for Amendment 62 and the anti-abortion people in general put as much energy into educating people, distributing condoms, empowering teenagers to say no and patrolling their streets to stop rape … if they worked more to prevent pregnancy, then they would probably prevent more abortions than with this thing,” Fairbanks said.

“Over the past few days, the massive quantities of signatures that poured in just amazed us,” said Gualberto Garcia-Jones, co-sponsor of the initiative. “That means that we collected over 2,600 signatures each day, about 2 signatures per minute.”

Earlier this month, the Secretary of State declared that the 79,648 signatures submitted by the campaign were not enough, that according to a preliminary review, too many would be thrown out as invalid. The group had 15 days to replace augment their petition by roughly 15,000 new signatures. Thousands of initiative petition signatures are tossed for a variety of technical reasons for all initiatives, which is why proponents should always turn in thousands of extras.

According to a Personhood release, more than 700 volunteers worked to gather signatures this month. Tuesday’s Republican primary caucus meetings provided one rich venue.

Keith Mason, co-founder of Personhood USA, said he was confident.

“We knew we could do it, because when you are working on such a critical, life and death issue, volunteers are passionate.” 

Critics of the initiative have charged that a personhood law would end in-vitro fertilization in the state, halt embryonic research, and compromise pregnant women’s rights.

Initiative supporters admit to wanting to end embryonic research and some fertilization techniques but they say the rhetoric on potential limits on women’s rights is overblown.

Former Planned Parenthood attorney Kevin C. Paul told The Colorado Independent that the Personhood people don’t know the ramifications because the law would cut a new path into the state statutes. Fact is, any new rights granted to fertilized eggs would jockey with existing women’s rights.

“Constitutional jurisprudence is all about weighing interests. If you’re creating a new interest, one that hadn’t existed previously, then that interest is going to have to be weighed against [those of] anybody else. And if you take the position that an unborn fetus is to be legally treated just the same as a woman, then those two interests clash.”

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When the group turned in its signatures last month, it the low number of signatures seemed doomed to fail to pass the random sample check all petition drives undergo. It seemed clear, in other words, that the 2010 right to life “personhood” proposal was as unpopular as the 2008 version, which although it made it to the ballot, was swamped in defeat, with more than 70 percent of Colorado voters rejecting the measure.

The group’s amendment seeks to grant fertilized human eggs the full spectrum of rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens.

Personhood Colorado this year turned in 79,648 signatures, not even 4,000 more than the 76,047 needed to land the initiative on the ballot. Thousands of signatures are routinely thrown out in the process of validating initiative petitions.

Gualberto Garcia Jones, Director of Personhood Colorado, told the Colorado Independent last month that he felt “great” about turning in the signatures.

“It’s been a six month effort. We have worked with nearly no funds and we are really spread thin as we are helping all the other states [on their personhood initiatives].”

Jones said he had worked only with volunteers to gather the signatures and that this would be the first initiative ever to make it onto the Colorado ballot without the help of paid signature gatherers. All signs suggest now that the initiative will not appear on the ballot.

Often ballot initiatives are pushed by right and left groups in election years partly to simply get voters into the voting booths. In 2008, conservatives believed the personhood initiative would bring social conservatives out to help defeat Obama and put GOP candidates in office. Many Democrats believe the lightning rod initiative did the opposite, working in concert with the deep Obama grassroots movement to bringing out Democrats determined to defeat the measure.

The Secretary of State’s office randomly checked 4,000 of the 79,648 submitted signatures. Nearly 1000 of the 4000 signature-sample were rejected. That figure is used to project how many roughly of the total signatures would be invalid. Roughly 60,000 of the roughly 76,000 signatures required would be valid. Personhood Colorado has until March 18 to collect the rest.

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Gualberto Garcia Jones

Gualberto Garcia Jones, Director of Personhood Colorado,  told the Colorado Independent that he felt “great” about turning in the required number of signatures. “It’s been a six month effort. We have worked with nearly no funds and we are really spread thin as we are helping all the other states [on their personhood initiatives].”

Jones said he has worked only with volunteers to gather the signatures and that this would be the first initiative ever to make it onto the Colorado ballot without the help of paid signature gatherers. He said his organization was now preparing to make its case to the voters.  

A growing spectrum of initiative opponents say the law would alter more than 2000 Colorado statutes, that it would end in-vitro fertilization and stem-cell research, and that it would severely limit the rights of pregnant women in the state.

“Given that in 2008, 70 percent of Colorado Voter– that’s 1.7 million people– rejected the amendment, we are pretty confident that the people of Colorado will again say that this goes too far,” said Jacinta Montoya Price, representative of Protect Families Protect Choices coalition.  ”Coloradans have said they don’t want the government interfering in their private decisions. We will continue to work against the extremists who think that their religious dogma should be entered into our state constitution.”

Dr. Savita Ginde, medical director for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said that the initiative would “insert a non-medical, non-scientific definition into the state constitution” and so will have “far-reaching consequences on important life decisions in areas of practice that go far beyond the issue of abortion.”

“This amendment would threaten religious freedom in Colorado and take away a woman’s right to make decisions about her own healthcare with her doctor, her family, and her God, without government intrusion.” said Rev. Dr. Phil Campbell, board member of the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado and director of Ministry Studies at the Iliff School of Theology.

Amanda Mountjoy, president of the Republican Majority for Choice, said the initiative was the work of a fringe group.

“Changing our state constitution is a serious matter that should not be manipulated by fringe special interest groups with a narrow, single-issue agenda.  Our state constitution is not the place or the vehicle to mandate private healthcare decisions, which are often some of the most complicated choices facing families.”

At a signature-gathering rally held last month at the capitol by Personhood USA and Colorado Right to Life, five legislators took the opportunity to sign petitions in support of the initiative. A crowd of roughly 700 supporters chanted “Hey hey! Ho ho! Roe V Wade has got to go!”

GOP Sens. Dave Schultheis, Scott Renfroe, Kevin Lumberg and Reps. B.J. Nikkel, Amy Stevens were joined by Republican Fourth District Congressional candidates Tom Lucero and Cory Gardner.

Schultheis told the Colorado Independent he thinks the organization was right to try again to pass an anti-abortion amendment in 2010.

“I think that it’s warranted,” he said. “To me it is unconscionable to deny the fact that life begins at the moment of conception. We all know it deep down and there are too many who continue to resist for ideological reasons. But the truth is the truth and you can not deny it. So at some point it will win.”

Renfroe agreed. 

“I think it is a shame that we have allowed the killing of so many babies over the years. And the science shows assuredly that it is a life and that we should protect it. That is why I support the personhood initiative.”

State Sen. Pat Steadman, who attended a Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains celebration the evening before the rally and actively worked against personhood initiatives in the past, told the Colorado independent that the people behind the initiative were working against the wishes of the public. She said it was frustrating.

“I can’t fathom what part of no the proponents don’t understand when 70 percent of the electorate rejected their stupid idea.”

Doug McBurney, conservative talk show host and one of the directors of Colorado Right to Life, told the Colorado Independent that, in effect, it didn’t matter what the public wanted for now, that it was a moral issue.

“We are here to stand against the most diabolical crime ever committed against mankind: legalized abortion. All of the wars and atrocities don’t even equal it… This is the greatest drive for human rights in the history of the world,” he said. 

In fact, he said, supporters of the initiative were fighting not “man’s cause” but ”God’s cause.” He said they were not afraid to speak the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Eve C. Gartner, deputy director of litigation for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said that personhood laws like the one proposed for Colorado would effect more than abortion.

“It looks to be able to ban contraception, abortion, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research but it would have impact outside reproductive law, as well– property law, tax law– nobody really understands the scope of it.”

She said that, should the initiative pass, the state’s courts would be kept busy determining the implications.

Vicki Cowart, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, stressed the need for women in Colorado to continue to have access to the full range of legal health care options. She said abortion was just one of those options and that Planned Parenthood along with a coalition of other groups are prepared to defeat a personhood initiative shouod it reach the ballot.  

“So here we are in Colorado and we are going to face this so-called personhood amendment again, but that is clearly an effort to make government interfere with people’s lives and decisions and health choices.”

She argued that the Colorado initiative was actually part of a “very clear nationwide strategy” to pass personhood legislation in order to get a case to the Supreme Court.

“I think we have to be very concerned about what today’s supreme court would do with Roe. We have a much more conservative court than we did.”

Price told the Colorado Independent that Protect Families Protect Choice coalition planned on actively fighting against the ballot initiative. “They submitted just enough signatures that may require a line by line review by the secretary of state so there is a chance we will challenge the signatures they submit.”

Jones said that they have been getting ready for the line by line review for the last few days. “If that happens they will give us a 15 days to make up the difference. We are already organizing for that possibility.”

Montoya Price, of Protect Families Protect Choices, said that if the initiative does make its way to the ballot, their coalition will be ready.

“We are prepared to amount a defense using the resources and common ground that we have with religious groups, Republicans, Latino organizations, with doctors and medical groups, and a wide swath of groups that believe that this should not be part of our state constitution.”

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Pregnant personhood (mahalie; cc Flickr)

“Clyburn survived but suffered a stillbirth as a result of the fall. She was arrested on homicide charges and is still being held without bail,” attorney Lynn M. Paltrow, founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women told The Colorado Independent.

If the Colorado Personhood Initiative were to pass next year, Paltrow said the state will see a host of new criminal offenders like Clyburn and a growing docket of personhood crimes. Coloradans should brace themselves, she said, for “Carolinafication.”

Sponsored by pro-life activist organization Personhood USA as part of a national campaign, ballot initiative 25 would amend the state constitution in more than 20,000 places, granting even the cells of a fertilized egg full legal rights while working to effectively limit the rights of pregnant women. Legal experts say the law would lead to outlandish and oppressive applications.

“Constitutional jurisprudence is all about weighing interests,” former Planned Parenthood attorney Kevin C. Paul of Heizer Paul LLP told The Colorado Independent. “If you’re creating a new interest, one that hadn’t existed previously, then that interest is going to have to be weighed against [those of] anybody else. And if you take the position that an unborn fetus is to be legally treated just the same as a woman, then those two interests clash.”

Should the personhood initiative pass, he said, it’s clear women could be held by the state to ensure the safety of a fetus.

Mark Silverstein, legal director in Colorado of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the law would apply to women unaware they’re pregnant.

“Let’s say a woman is sexually active and she has a drink. If a drink is determined to harm a potential human life, well wouldn’t it be considered reckless endangerment to have that drink — or to engage in some other type of activity that would pose a risk to a fetus?”

Erik Maulbetsch, also with the ACLU in Colorado, wrote in an email that although the way fetal abuse and women’s rights issues interact are certainly a concern, in his eyes, the immediate threat of “outlawing hormonal birth control, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research, are the most dangerous and intrusive aspects of the proposal.”

Silverstein said the ACLU would actively campaign against Initiative 25, the “son of 48,” referring to the failed Initiative 48, last year’s version of the Colorado Personhood initiative.

Deal with ramifications later

The legal questions surrounding the initiative at this point are not a priority to Personhood USA, which lawyers like Paul see as a problem.

“It’s just a bad idea to try to amend the basis of all other law when the answer to the question ‘What will happen when I do this?’ is simply ‘I really don’t know.’ It is very hard to predict the difficult and even absurd results.

“The term ‘person’ has been legally defined,” he added, “but ‘the beginning of biological development’ has no definition yet.” Paul said the change in language would affect “our fundamental due process rights, the provision to inalienable rights, access to our courts and a right to justice.”

Presented with some of the hypothetical legal and rights issues related to the initiative, Keith Mason, co-founder of Personhood USA and one of the proponents of Initiative 25, said he didn’t want to speculate on the particulars of the bill.

That wasn’t good enough for Abe Saur, associate editor at lefty grab-bag politics and criticism site The Awl. He asked Mason whether clinically obese pregnant woman, who have a 30-percent higher risk than non-obese women of giving birth to children with heart disease, could be convicted of abuse or murder.

Will we be criminalizing the pregnant obese? Saur asked.

“I can’t answer that because it’s a hypothetical,” said Mason. “It’s like asking what would happen if a Martian came down and impregnated a woman on Earth. Let’s talk about real issues.”

Mason said he would “worry about the [legal] details later,” after the bill had passed.

Losing one’s personhood

“We know, based on hundreds of cases across the country, some of them in Colorado, that if, as a matter of law fetuses are described as separate persons, essentially pregnant women lose their Personhood,” Paltrow said.

The ACLU’s Silverstein said that although it would take numerous court cases to determine specifically how personhood would affect Colorado law, the effect of providing an unborn child personhood rights would unquestionably restrict the civil rights of women.

But Personhood Colorado director and the initiative proponent Gualberto Garcia Jones said the law is designed not to infringe rights but to extend them. Initiative 25 is slightly updated to be more inclusive than last year’s Initiative 48. We’ve changed “the initial marker for the beginning of life from fertilization to the beginning of the biological development of a human being,” he said.

“It’s intended to account for human beings who may be created through asexual reproduction in laboratories and used as raw material for research, organs, or stem cells. Fertilization would not have properly applied to asexually reproduced humans, but even asexually reproduced human beings have a definite biological beginning.”

It’s not that simple, said Silverstein. Presently, Colorado Code defines homicide, for example, as “the killing of a person by another.” The code also says that a person is someone who has been born and is alive at the time of the homicidal act. “If personhood applies to the criminal code, then you have homicide involving persons who have not even been born — to persons who might be a single cell,” Silverstein said.

Paltrow said that all it would take is one child welfare worker, one doctor, one individual to decide that a woman is endangering the life of her unborn child and she could be arrested and taken away.

“Colorado like every state has a civil commitment law. Civil commitment is a process established under mental health laws to confine individuals believed to pose a danger to themselves or others. If the [personhood] measure succeeds and the unborn are defined as having full constitutional rights, the state could commit a pregnant woman from the moment of fertilization if she is perceived to pose a danger to the fertilized egg.”

Carolinafication

The South Carolina Courts in 1997 ruled that fetuses that can survive outside the womb are persons under child abuse rules. As a result, 90 women have been arrested there, including Clyburn.

Another is South Carolinan, Regina McKnight, who smoked crack cocaine in 1999 while she was pregnant. Her unborn baby died in the eighth month. Twenty-four-year-old McKnight, who had three other young children at the time and was pregnant again, was convicted of murder and sentenced to a 12-year prison term.

“Once a personhood measure passed there would be no limit” to the controls the state could place on a suspect pregnant woman, said Paltrow. “Civil commitment laws could be used to keep a woman from, say, working in certain jobs, taking a wide range of medications, or even leaving town so she could have a vaginal birth after a c-section,” which can be seen as endangering the fetus.

These cases aren’t theoretical.

Paltrow described the experience of Angela Carter, who was undergoing treatment for severe cancer. Carter was forced by doctors concerned with the health of the fetus to have a cesarean section. Both Carter and the fetus died. The C-section was listed as one of the causes for the mother’s death . Although the courts found that the hospital acted outside of its legal rights at the time, Paltrow said the personhood amendment would make such actions common place.

“Once you have defined a fetus as a separate person from the mother, the state has the power to literally take custody of a pregnant woman from the moment she conceives.”

Jonathan Van Blerkom, a University of Colorado at Boulder professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, agreed that zygotes in fertility clinics would be protected. He said not only researchers involved in embryonic stem cell research but also individuals looking to participate in in-vitro fertilization programs would be affected.

“We are talking about embryos in the one cell stage … What happens when a liquid nitrogen tank, which keeps embryos frozen in storage, is damaged? It happened during an earthquake in California. Concrete fell on a tank and all of the embryos were destroyed. Is there criminal liability there?”

Like others, Silverstein sees the personhood drive as misguided and a sweeping end run around the legal right to abortion. The proposed initiative simply has not been thought through, he said.

“If a woman has a beer while she is pregnant is she furnishing alcohol to a minor?”

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This new version would move the legal definition of a person further back into the reproductive cycle, granting cells the full spectrum of citizen rights. Opposition groups, including Colorado genetic and fertilization researchers, say the law would have spiraling consequences, that it would put women at risk and freeze current work in medicine and reproduction.

Colorado Right to Life and Personhood USA, the groups behind proposed Initiative 25, are undeterred by the fact that Coloradans voted against the test-run amendment last year by a margin of three to one. The new amendment is even farther reaching, moving the initial marker for the beginning of life from “fertilization” to “the beginning of the biological development of a human being.”

Personhood Colorado Director and the initiative proponent Gualberto Garcia Jones told The Colorado Independent that the change was made “to be more comprehensive in our definition of a person” and was not done to make it more appealing to voters.

“It’s intended to account for human beings who may be created through asexual reproduction in laboratories and used as raw material for research, organs, or stem cells. Fertilization would not have properly applied to asexually reproduced humans, but even asexually reproduced human beings have a definite biological beginning,” Jones explained.

“Over half-a-million Coloradans voted for the personhood initiative in 2008,” Jones said in a press conference announcing the campaign. “Their votes acknowledging the God-given right to life of the pre-born revolutionizes the pro-life movement and encourage us toward victory. ”

Science stoppage

Johnathan Van Blerkom, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, said if the personhood initiative were passed and upheld, it would have negative consequences for those not only involved in embryonic stem cell research but also for individuals looking to participate in in-vitro fertilization programs.

“To begin with [embryonic] stem cell research would stop,” Van Blerkom said. “There would be no research in genetics in the causes of the origins congenital diseases that occur in humans, how to fix them, how to protect them early.”

“You would find in this state, myself included, that embryo research would freeze. If there were criminal penalties or you were lumped together with abortionists for looking at embryos that are discarded because they are abnormal and you want to know why they are abnormal … no one is going to do it.”

Van Blerkom who works at a fertilization clinic as well, said that in-vitro fertilization would likely end in the state. He explained that the very process of fertilization can kill the embryo if more than one sperm gets into the egg. He said legal liability would loom over all procedures.

“It’s criminal liability. So would any program want to freeze an embryo in the state of Colorado? If the embryos die, as they frequently do when they are thawed, is that your responsibility? Is it an act of God? An act of science?”

Women’s rights

Monica McCafferty, media relations specialist for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said the slightly modified language does nothing to protect the rights and safety of mothers.

“The new initiative has the same goal [as Amendment 48], to ban all abortion even in the cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the woman is in danger.”

McCafferty said that the language is vague and misleading but the ramifications are clear. “This would have huge implications.”

The legislation would end women’s right to choose in Colorado but would also hamper their ability to take many forms of birth control. McCafferty said the law would create major government intrusions into private lives.

“Coloradans have said time and again that they don’t want government or the courts in their lives when it comes making these personal private decisions.”

Jones frankly agreed. He said the goal of the amendment was to provide a child in the womb with due process and equality of justice.

“If passed, the Personhood Amendment would regain the state’s right to extend protections broader than those granted by the U.S. Constitution, and it would help transform our current decadent culture which currently values a person’s utility instead of their innate worth as a human being.”

But Jones didn’t agree that the language was vague.

“We have proposed a very simple, level-headed definition of what a person is. Namely, a person is a human being from the very beginning of his or her biological development.”

During the 2008 debate over the personhood initiative, Jessica Berg, professor of law and bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, told NPR that fertilized eggs in fertility clinics might need to be counted on the census and that pregnant women presumably could use the high-occupancy traffic lanes. There are absurdities that grow out of this kind of thinking, she said.

“If you don’t know you’re pregnant and you drink or do something dangerous — or you do something problematic very early on, and you’re in Colorado or even passing through Colorado — have you committed child abuse and endangerment?”

Power politics

Asked why voters did not support the initiative in the past Jones told The Colorado Independent that the initiative fell victim to power politics.

“We realize that there are very large political and corporate interests that will do everything in their power to twist this simple proposition into ludicrous scenarios. We’ll be more aggressive this time around in addressing those scare tactics.”

He said that with groups such as Planned Parenthood heading up a coalition of groups to oppose the initiative — last year’s coalition was called Protect Families, Protect Choices — the “pro-abortionists have almost unlimited funds.”

“You see, killing babies pays. Saving babies doesn’t.”

Jones said Planned Parenthood had taken in more than $1 billion in 2008.

RH Reality Check recently reported, however, that anti-abortion rights groups are not hurting for funds.

Wendy Norris, former editor for The Colorado Independent, wrote that personhood groups have brought in almost $58 million in donations. The American Life League, an organization where Jones recently served as legislative director, has brought in more than $35 million since 2003.

National drive

Emilie Ailts, executive director of Denver-based NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado, said that the initiatives are part of a nationwide attempt to advance personhood legislation. She said that Personhood USA initially had hoped to introduce legislation in 29 states but that Personhood USA now seems ready to mount grassroots efforts in only nine states.

Aits said that the initiative would change the Colorado Constitution in 20,000 different places.

“People can not even prognosticate how once it was fully implemented how it would affect peoples lives. It would impact so many laws.” She said it would impact not only fertilization and stem cell research but also access to many forms of birth control in the state.

NARAL, like Planned Parenthood and the Republican Majority for Choice banded together with the Colorado Bar Association and 90 other groups, many which do not normally deal with reproductive issues, to create Protect Families, Protect Choices, Aits said. Like last year, she expects the same groups to oppose the measure should it make its way onto the ballot.

“Everyone saw this as something so draconian in 2008 that it would have very negative impacts on the lives of women and their families in the state of Colorado.”

McCafferty said that while Protect Families, Protect Choices worked diligently to oppose last years personhood initiative, it was the Colorado voters who made the decision to reject the amendment.

Jones said he is confident his measure will pass.

“With so much money comes a lot of influence, earned and bought media, and friends in high places. Against this, personhood only has one thing, the truth. The amazing thing is that it is only a matter of time before we prevail.”

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