Rep. Amy Stephens — a Colorado Springs Republican who once worked for evangelical powerhouse organization Focus on the Family — argued Tuesday against an anti-abortion proposal that would have made providing emergency contraception to victims of rape and incest a Class 3 felony.
Lori Stodghill was 31-one years old, seven-months pregnant with twin boys and feeling sick when she arrived at St. Thomas More hospital in Cañon City on New Year’s Day 2006. She was vomiting and short of breath and she passed out as she was being wheeled into an examination room. Medical staff tried to resuscitate her but, as became clear only later, a main artery feeding her lungs was clogged and the clog led to a massive heart attack. Stodghill’s obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, who also happened to be the obstetrician on call for emergencies that night, never answered a page. His patient died at the hospital less than an hour after she arrived and her twins died in her womb.
A controversial and unreported move by the Board of Weld County Commissioners to stop dispensing emergency contraception has forced low-income county health department patients to seek the drugs at the scant number of non-profit clinics in the area.
With Colorado Republicans enjoying a one-seat advantage in the State House, Democrats are eying a dozen or more districts as winnable this year. One of those is HD 27 in northwest suburban Jefferson County, where hard-right first-term incumbent Libby Szabo is fighting off Democratic insider Tim Allport. Voter registration numbers slightly favor Szabo but Allport is confident heading into the last weeks of the campaign.
Jennifer Mason, spokeswoman for Personhood Colorado, told the Colorado Independent, she believes it’s not too late for her group to land its anti-abortion initiative on the ballot in Colorado this year.
State lawmakers in Oklahoma this week took up a piece of legislation that would grant “personhood” status to human embryos. The measure, which was passed by the state Senate, advanced through the House Public Health Committee, despite warnings that it could endanger the lives of women.
Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has furthered his commitment to the pro-life cause, signing a draft version of the Oklahoma Personhood Amendment petition. The ‘fetal personhood’ movement has swept the country in recent months and aims to outlaw abortion by defining life as beginning at the moment of conception.
DENVER— The political battle in Colorado over abortion, women’s healthcare and family planning heated up Monday when lawmakers, activist groups and supporters on opposite sides of the issues took turns rallying on the west steps of the capitol here.
On Tuesday, the Virginia House passed a bill that would declare unborn fetuses people, thus banning abortion and potentially certain forms of contraception and some fertility treatments. This positions Virginia — which now has a Republican super-majority — to become the first state to enact a fetal personhood measure, which supporters hope will lead the Supreme Court to revisit the constitutionality of abortion rights.
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