First, let me urge all of you to vote tomorrow. Second, be sure what you’re actually voting for and on. There are going to be a lot of amendments tomorrow on ballots across the country, and the short description allowed on most of those ballots is a very short description of often extremely complex language. I’ll give one example from Colorado.
Amendment 67 came out of true tragedy and my heart goes out to Heather Surovik, who lost her baby boy, Brady, who at eight months could have survived outside the womb if a driver had not taken the baby’s chance at life, but the law didn’t allow for an unborn child to be a person, so the driver that hit Ms. Surovik and her baby couldn’t be charged with involuntary manslaughter, or anything else pertaining to the baby. Amendment 67 was supposed to make certain that this oversight didn’t happen again, but when you read 67 all the way through it doesn’t actually do that for certain and potentially it does a great deal more than that.
Some people who have already voted early on 67 thought that it banned abortion in Colorado, but it actually doesn’t. In fact, the language of it protects that and other voluntary medical procedures that the woman chooses to have. The Amendment tries to redefine personhood, but unfortunately the language is so vague that doesn’t really define anything. What it does do is potentially put into law some very questionable language.
If Amendment 67 passes then potentially any miscarriage would have to be investigated as a suspicious death, because the unborn fetus would be considered a person. If we make every fetus a person under the law, but abortion is still a legal choice, then that leaves other legal questions unanswered, and even more confused. Amendment 67 opens up law that could be used to outlaw some kinds of birth control, or not. I’ll repeat the language is so vague that it leaves too much open to interpretation. Read it for yourself below and make your own decision, but I’ve had friends on both sides of the abortion issue agree that this amendment does nothing that either side wants to see enacted in law, but the short version of it on the early ballot makes it sound like a good idea, so please read Amendment 67 all the way through before you go to vote in Colorado, and read all the amendments on all the ballots you will be voting on across the country tomorrow. Don’t be fooled by the short version, or anyone else’s opinion, read the fine print for yourself and decide.
Here’s the link to the full language of Colorado’s Amendment 67.