Colorado’s Amendment 79 is Abortions Up to Birth at Taxpayer Expense. Vote No

Pro-life experts have sent out their final warnings to the 10 states that have abortion-related initiatives on the ballot. Family Research Council has put together a Life on the Ballot resource to help educate voters about what these measures entail in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota.

“[W]hat’s so critical about these,” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice stated, is that they “are constitutional referendums” that enshrine abortion as a fundamental right in these state’s constitutions. “[C]ertainly,” he added, “all Bible-believing Christ followers in those states [need] to go out and vote for life.” To help unpack what’s happening in Colorado, Brittany Vessely, executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference, joined Friday’s edition of “Washington Watch” to explain what the state’s Amendment 79 does and why Christians must vote against it.

“Amendment 79,” or the Right to Abortion and Health Insurance Coverage Initiative, “is very deceptive,” she explained. “The language in it that the ‘government shall not deny, impede, or discriminate against’ the right to abortion means that all commonsense safeguards for abortion are gone.” For instance, as Vessely and her colleagues have noted, the three main dangers Amendment 79 poses, if passed, are that it would destroy parental rights, allow late-term abortions, and force taxpayers to “pay for late abortions for in-state and out-of-state pregnant women.”

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If these safeguards are no longer enforced, it would open the door for “a minor [to] be coerced into an abortion without their parents’ knowledge,” she warned. Additionally, Vessely cautioned that it would mean sex-trafficked minors, which are already a major problem in the state, could “be taken to an abortion clinic … and [taken] back into the slavery of sex trafficking” without any notification to parents or guardians. “That’s how extreme this law is,” she added.

According to Vessely, another problematic part of this amendment is that it “removes section 50 of Article Five of our state constitution,” which currently “prohibits taxpayer funding for abortion.” But if this initiative were to take effect, it’s likely the “Colorado legislature … [will] come back in 2025 and allocate a multi-million dollar bill” that would fund “abortion procedures and travel using our tax dollars.”

Hice noted that this same deception is prevalent “on so many of these amendments … [and] referendums across these various 10 states.” As Vessely explained, it’s important to understand that if Amendment 79 enshrines abortion into the state’s constitution, “even if we win … swing states on abortion” moving forward, “women will still be flown to the state of Colorado using our tax dollars, and … babies will still die.”

It’s a “very progressive legislature” in Colorado that wants to “fund abortion procedures and travel,” Vessely stated. And while “it’s different in every state,” Hice noted, “what is the percentage of votes needed in order to ratify this in the state constitution there in Colorado?” According to Vessely, “55% of the vote” is required “to add Amendment 79 to our state constitution” However, she added, because this initiative does two different things by adding abortion as a fundamental right and taking away Section 50 of Article Five from Colorado’s constitution, “that actually [makes] it really subject to legal scrutiny.”

Vessely did say that the polling she and her team conducted shows that the messaging on how dangerous Amendment 79 is has resonated, and the support for the amendment has dropped from 60% to 47%.

She continued, “I think with our polling, with our messaging, [and] with our unified coalition,” there’s a great “opportunity to defeat Amendment 79.” Ultimately, Vessely explained, “What we lacked is funding, and that’s a national problem in all of the states that are dealing with abortion amendments. We are being significantly outspent by the pro-abortion lobby, which is unfortunate because the pro-abortion lobby knows that they stand to benefit millions of dollars more by pouring in millions now.”

However, Vessely concluded, “the pro-life side is doing [everything possible] to fight this very extreme amendment in the state of Colorado.”

LifeNews Note: Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand, where this originally appeared.