Personhood initiative lining up friends and foes

A version of the anti-abortion initiative soundly defeated by Colorado voters in 2008 is making its way to the 2010 ballot, this time reworked as an “egg-as-a-person” initiative. 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.

Vehicle-impound initiatives test Colorado ballot system

In the debate surrounding Colorado’s famously loose ballot initiative system, the so-called impound initiatives introduced repeatedly in local municipalities over the past three years might serve as a test case. This year, they have been introduced in Denver and two of its suburbs, Aurora and Lakewood. The proposed laws would require police to seize the vehicles of every unlicensed driver they stop.

But the initiatives aren’t primarily about keeping the roads safe and the man behind them doesn’t live in Denver, Aurora or Lakewood. As many know by now, the man behind the initiatives is Daniel Hayes. He lives in unincorporated Jefferson County and his initiatives are a weapon in his personal battle against illegal immigrants.

Musgrave drains campaign fund to train young antiabortion activists

The national antiabortion group, Susan B. Anthony List, is the recipient of a cool 50 grand courtesy of defeated U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s campaign fund. The Fort Morgan conservative, who now works for the List’s Votes Have Consequences outreach effort, will fund the “Young Leaders” training program, an initiative of the group’s separate tax-exempt charitable education foundation.

That organizational do-si-do may allow Musgrave to effectively skirt a federal campaign finance rule that prohibits candidates from donating unused war chests to their employers.

Personhood bill lays an egg in North Dakota Senate

Out-of-state anti-abortion activists who rallied behind Colorado’s Amendment 48 last year came up with another big goose egg Friday when the North Dakota Senate rejected a “personhood” bill that sought to confer constitutional rights to zygotes.

But reproductive rights advocates aren’t cheering Roughrider State lawmakers just yet.

Ann Coulter bushwacked on radio by conservative Christian abortion foes

Ultra-conservative Christian talk radio hosts are taking a new approach to getting their message out — ambushing right-wing pundit Ann Coulter over her support for 2008 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who absolutist antiabortion activists accuse of being “willing to sacrifice children for your vote.”

The Denver-based American Right to Life Action is leading the charge with a YouTube video excerpting Coulter’s on-air radio freak outs and calling on the acid-tongued author to apologize and retract her support for Romney.

Birth control bill passes Colorado House, moves on to governor’s desk

Efforts to block a contraception bill shriveled today in the Colorado House after a series of weird and contentious legislative hearings and an unsuccessful attempt during a House floor debate Friday to add a poison pill amendment to insert the religious definition of pregnancy as at the moment of conception.

Birth control bill survives poison pill amendment

Colorado House Republicans failed in their attempt Friday to modify the Birth Control Protection Act that would re-define pregnancy as at the moment of conception.

During the floor debate, bill co-sponsor Rep. Anne McGihon (D-Denver) derided the wrecking amendment offered by Rep. Don Marostica (R-Loveland) as a back door tactic to grant “personhood” to fertilized eggs.

Contraception foes share bizarre theories, intimate lives at House hearing

During a hearing Monday on the Birth Control Protection Act, five anti-contraception witnesses spoke out, often with rambling filibusters and indelicate public disclosures about their personal sexual histories.

‘Personhood’ amendment likely to fizzle in Montana statehouse

Conservative activists are celebrating the latest antiabortion bill to wind its way through a state legislature — this time in Montana — that seeks to challenge the landmark 1973 Roe vs Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Except before they party hearty, a quick check of state law reveals the likelihood of a constitutional “personhood” amendment to give fertilized eggs civil rights is as flat as stale champagne.

Harvey, Lundberg argue contraception kills on Senate birth control bill

Semantics were the order of the day when conservative Republican state senators attempted to weaken a bill defining contraception arguing that the state must first define that “life begins at conception.”