Proposed Colorado personhood ballot initiative fails to have enough valid signatures — backers plan to challenge count

Proponents of the latest Colorado “Personhood” amendment have failed to make the ballot, Denver's Fox 31 reports. According to the news station, "Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced Wednesday that the group behind the proposed ballot measure fell 3,859 signatures short of the 86,105 they needed to qualify for the November ballot."

In 2010 and 2008, similar "personhood amendments" made the ballot. The amendments declared that a "person" exists at the moment of conception. A zygote, or fertilized egg, would have constitutional rights. These ballot initiatives were overwhelmingly rejected by Colorado voters.

The Colorado Personhood Initiative has vowed to challenge the Secretary of State's determination. "The law states that we have 30 days to file a challenge, and we fully intend to do so. Based on the Secretary of State's 5% sample, we are have calculated that we will be able to recover the signatures necessary to appear on the ballot," explained Gualberto Garcia Jones, J.D., legal analyst for Personhood USA. "This disqualification is by an extremely narrow number, and as we have seen thousands of valid voter signatures discarded unnecessarily, we will be filing a challenge to ensure that every Colorado voter's voice is heard, and that every signature counts."

The text of the proposed Colorado personhood amendment reads:

Section 32. The right to life.

(1) Purpose. In order to affirm basic human dignity, be it resolved that the right to life in this constitution applies equally to all innocent persons.

(2) Effect. The intentional killing of any innocent person is prohibited.

(a) Only birth control that kills a person shall be affected by this section.

(b) Only in vitro fertilization and assisted reproduction that kills a person shall be affected by this section.

(c) Medical treatment for life threatening physical conditions intended to preserve life shall not be affected by this section.

(d) Spontaneous miscarriages shall not be affected by this section.

(e) No innocent child created through rape or incest shall be killed for the crime of his or her father.

(3) Definitions. As used in this section,

(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.

(c) "Spontaneous miscarriage" is the unintentional termination of a pregnancy.

(d) "Child" includes a human being prior to and during birth.

(e)"Medical treatment for life threatening physical conditions intended to preserve life" includes but is not limited to treatment for cancer, ectopic and molar pregnancy, twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, and placenta previa.

(4) Self-executing, and severability provision. All provisions of this section are self-executing and are severable.

D. Beeksma

One of the growing crowd of American "nones" herself, Deborah is a prolific writer who finds religion, spirituality and the impact of belief (and non-belief) on culture inspiring, fascinating and at times, disturbing. She hosts the God Discussion show and handles the site's technical work. Her education and background is in business, ecommerce and law.

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