Colorado Amendment 79 Would Force People to Fund Abortions, Deny Parental Consent
What gets lost in the shuffle in the post-Roe v. Wade era is that amending a state constitution to embed abortion can and does go far beyond what even Roe allowed!
Proponents typically deny this, as is the case in Colorado, where abortion is currently already legal “without restriction following the enactment of an ‘extreme’ pro-abortion law in April of 2020 that made abortion a ‘right’ by state statute and allows abortion to be available through all 40 weeks of pregnancy for any reason,” according to Nancy Flanders. The effect of Amendment 79 is to remove even the most modest limitations on abortion.
Denver Post columnist Krista Kafer asks in a column this week, “Does Colorado really want zero regulation of abortion?: Amendment 79 could lead to the repeal of parental notification laws and would allow taxpayer-funded abortions.”
Right out of the chute she tells us
Most Colorado voters are not aware that abortion until birth is legal in Colorado, 71% according to a recent poll. In other words, a healthy baby who can feel pain can be aborted in the second or third trimester of gestation. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that hundreds of abortions are performed after 21 weeks gestation every year, often on healthy moms with healthy babies.
Are there any limitations? Yes, but….
In our state, abortionists face only two restrictions; they must notify the parents or guardians of minors seeking an abortion and they cannot bill taxpayers for elective abortions. Both of these commonsense laws will be eliminated if Amendment 79 passes and a “right” to abortion is added to the state constitution and the prohibition on public funding for abortion is lifted.
Kafer writes of young women who were trafficked or sexually abused. “In one case, a pregnancy is what alerted parents to intervene and get help,” she adds. “When parents are not notified, traffickers and molesters can hide the abuse by eliminating the evidence, an inconvenient baby. A majority of states have parent notification laws for these reasons. Such laws protect teens from untreated health complications and from continued sexual abuse.”
Amendment 79 “would likely lead to the attempted repeal of parental notification laws as it is considered an impediment to abortion access and could violate a person’s rights under the amendment.”
Kafer ends with this all too likely scenario:
Why would we want something extreme in our Constitution that prevents us from following the science – and also removes commonsense safeguards to abortion, such as parental notification and direct taxpayer funding?
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.