Colorado Amendment 67 - How the personshood movement will tell barefaced lies right to your face

I've written about the personhood movement before, here and here (be warned, I am really not very nice about it or some of the people involved). To paraphrase a famous Jedi, "You'll never come across a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." They lie. A lot. Sometimes by omission, sometimes deliberately. It is what they do, it is what they need to do in order to make their position and themselves seem reasonable. Colorado's proposed Amendment 67, on the ballot for this years November elections, is just the latest example of this.

So let me tell you about Amendment 67, which according to the Colorado Secretary of State's website is:

The title as designated and fixed by the Board is as follows:

An amendment to the Colorado constitution protecting pregnant women and unborn children by defining "person" and "child" in the Colorado criminal code and the Colorado wrongful death act to include unborn human beings.

The ballot title and submission clause as designated and fixed by the Board is as follows:

Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution protecting pregnant women and unborn children by defining "person" and "child" in the Colorado criminal code and the Colorado wrongful death act to include unborn human beings?

Although there have been attempts to claim this is not a personhood bill (although some admit that it is indeed a personhood bill) or an attempt to ban abortion, that is exactly what it is. It is just coming through the back door.

Background

In July 2012 Heather Surovik, the face of Amendment 67, tragically lost her unborn baby at 8 months when a drunk driver ran into her car. The driver was charged with vehicular assault but the law in Colorado at the time did not allow for extra charges for the death of the unborn fetus, whom Ms. Surovik had named Brady (hence Amendment 67 also being called "Brady's Amendment"). As a result of public pressure, the Colorado Congress passed H.B. 1154, the Crimes Against Pregnant Women Act, in 2013. This added Article 3.5 (Offenses Against Pregnant Women) to Title 18 (Criminal Code) of the Colorado Revised Statutes, effective July 1 2013.

The backers of Amendment 67 say that Article 3.5 doesn't go far enough because it doesn't use the word homicide. And here is where you start to see what the pro-Amendment 67 people are up to.

It doesn't use the word homicide because Article 3 of the Colorado Revised Statutes (C.R.S. from now on) defines homicide as:

"(1) "Homicide" means the killing of a person by another. C.R.S. § 18-3-101(1)

 And then defines person as :

(2) "Person", when referring to the victim of a homicide, means a human being who had been born and was alive at the time of the homicidal act. C.R.S. § 18-3-101(2)

So, the death of a fetus can't be homicide because the definition of person in Part 1 (Homicide and Related Offenses) of Article 3 (Offences Against the Person) specifically states that you must have been born and be alive to be a person for the purposes of homicide in the criminal code. So the definition of person under the criminal code must be changed in Colorado in order for an unborn fetus to be considered a person, and for their death to then possibly be considered a homicide.

Hence, Amendment 67.