As I anticipated, the huge loss of Amendment 48 has not dampened the plans of the religious right. The measure would have defined a fertilized egg as a person in Colorado’s constitution.
A blogger named Dani emphasizes the point. Dani is “a right-wing Christian fanatic on assignment from God to be a good helper to my husband and to train up my children with the Fear and Admonition of the Lord!” Okay, then.
Dani looks on the bright side of Amendment 48’s defeat:
Even though Amendment 48 didn’t pass, we still consider this a victory for the pro-life movement since over 550,000 people voted to affirm the personhood of the pre-born Child yesterday in Colorado! On only a $200,000 budget, it’s hard to compete with multi-million dollar corporations like Planned Parenthood who put out deceitful attack ads packed with lies in order to defeat Amendment 48. Well, we certainly wouldn’t expect godless baby-killers to be honest while promoting their agenda, now would we? The majority of people are evil, and the majority voted against personhood, but we are not giving up that easy, in fact, the battle has just begun…
Notice that Dani does not specify a single “lie” by the opposition. Certainly she could not find any such faults with the paper written by Diana Hsieh and me criticizing Amendment 48.
Dani then reproduces the media release of a new group called Personhood USA, which “plans to assist local pro-life groups in different states to put personhood amendments on their states ballot by using the petition process.”
The group proudly declares that its purpose is to impose religious faith by law:
“Praise Jesus! The pro-life tide is rising in America, now is the time for the entire pro-life movement to turn the focus off from permitting murder but attempting to ‘regulate’ it, to pushing for the recognition of the God given right to life for all innocent persons. Persons are humans beings from the moment of fertilization.” Cal Zastrow, Co-Founder of Personhood USA.
Keith Mason, “one of the Personhood Amendment organizers,” said, “Personhood has changed the abortion debate. Now we are asking, ‘When does human life begin?’ The opposition can not and will not answer this question, but we can. And when we answer that question, we win.”
Hsieh and I address the matter at length in our paper. Not a single advocate of Amendment 48 has even attempted to refute our arguments. (Wayne Laugesen has come the closest to doing so.)
Meanwhile, Mason and his crew have utterly failed to sustain an argument that personhood begins at fertilization. Notice that Mason says he can answer the question, but he refrains from doing so in the release. The “argument” at PersonhoodUSA’s web page is childish equivocation.
So pony up, Mason: prove to the world that personhood begins at the moment of fertilization, taking into account the issues that Hsieh and I raise in our paper. The fact that you cannot do so indicates why Coloradans did not take your movement seriously.
See PersonhoodUSA’s web page for a list of the 16 states the group plans to target in the future. The magnificent defeat of the measure in Colorado should slow down efforts elsewhere. Yet the group may still find some traction in some areas to the degree that people reject reason in favor of religious faith.