After winning just 27 percent of the vote in 2008, activists with Personhood USA’s state chapter Personhood Colorado were encouraged enough by their 29 percent showing last year to place a third personhood amendment on the state ballot in 2012. Even though the personhood proponents lost, badly, in Mississippi in November, they are hoping to present to Colorado voters a ballot measure with ambiguous language that if passed would give legal rights to zygotes and criminalize abortion and common forms of birth control:
The Colorado Personhood Amendment marks a departure from traditional, one-sentence personhood amendments, which have been among the shortest ballot initiatives in the United States. The new amendment was written by Gualberto Garcia Jones, legal analyst for Personhood USA and a founding member of Personhood Colorado, and Kristi Brown (nèe Burton), sponsor of the 2008 Personhood amendment. The language of the new Personhood amendment includes the following definitions:
(a) “PERSON” APPLIES TO EVERY HUMAN BEING REGARDLESS OF THE METHOD OF CREATION.
(b) A “HUMAN BEING” IS A MEMBER OF THE SPECIES HOMO SAPIENS AT ANY STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT.
With the new language, Personhood Colorado may also shift its ad campaign.
Last year, the group had an actor impersonate a slave and urged people to back the personhood law:
Personhood Colorado also tried to characterized opponents of the personhood law as Nazis and ran ads that depicted President Obama as “the Angel of Death”:
