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Letters to the Editor: So much at stake with Amendment 48

Colorado Daily

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Ladies, do you appreciate access to birth control? Gentleman, I could ask you the same thing.

No matter how you answer a very different question -- "at what point does life begin?" -- Amendment 48 on the Colorado ballot must be met with a resounding "No way!" by young men and women who value the freedom to make decisions about their sex lives.

Amendment 48 requires changes in the state constitution legally changing the definition of personhood to a fertilized egg. Therefore: a fertilized egg is a person. Even if constitutional amendment sounds like something you can support, let's think about this further. . .

How do birth control methods like the IUD, the patch, the Nuva Ring and the pill work? These methods prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the wall of the uterus; a fertilized egg, aka a person.

If you take the pill are you therefore guilty of murdering a person? Yeah, you may think it is ridiculous, but if the state constitution says a fertilized egg is a person, then you, me and every other woman on birth control (as well as her partner) is suddenly facing some serious ramifications.

Birth control is an important aspect of women's lives, and any effort to change the constitution must responsibly consider all of the ways that a woman may exercise her right to control her body.

Virginia Sanprie

CU Ph.D candidate

HELP MAIN STREET

Why is it that when the Republicans run things, we the middle class are forced to bend over and take it up the a$$ to bail out greedy free marketeers who have once again stolen the American dream and our children's future?

I'm tired of hearing how giving the top few percent of Americans continued tax cuts and corporate welfare has created a trickle-down economy that will help the middle class when it never has and never will.

I wish for once the media will tell it like it is, that the Republican Party since the Reagan administration has pissed on we the people and robbed us blind and will continue to do so if we give them another blank check with no oversight.

Congress is once again being asked to bail out Wall Street. Where is the help for those in need on Main Street?

Kim Cohen

Boulder

MCMAVERICKS

How much reform are you counting on? Are you counting on Sen. John McCain to thoroughly clean out Bush's appointees and repair the damage of two Bush Republican administrations? Where is he going to get enough new McCain-type, schedule "C" political appointees to staff and reform Washington's federal agencies?

There is no way McCain has a sufficient number of like-minded individuals to fill those positions. He can't even staff his campaign with new fresh personnel. Lobbyists, Bush staffers and Washington insiders simply have moved over to work their magic for McCain.

The missteps and truthiness in McCain's campaign will only erode further as these insiders become more entrenched and secure in a McCain administration. Bush appointees will largely continue in power -- four more years.

Think McMore, McSame Republicans, only more so for four more years.

Paul O. Radde

Longmont

Comments

Posted by citizenschallenge on September 26, 2008 at 12:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Quoting from the text of Proposition 48: “An amendment to the Colorado Constitution defining the term “person” to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as “person” is used in those provisions of the Colorado Constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of Law. “

What are we coming to? Who comes up with such notions and then believes in them enough to want to cram them down everyone else’s throat? Can we please consider a fertilized egg for a moment? It is a seed, home to unknowable potentialities. Do Prop #48 proponents understand that depending upon which data you believe, fifty to seventy-five percent of all pregnancies spontaneously (god initiated?) abort? (http://www.choice101.com/17-conceptio....)

Yes, those fertilized eggs are bundles of sacred life and a world of potentialities. They deserve to be treated as sacred entities. But, death, passing on is a part of life, especially during those months of gestation. The fertilized egg must achieve genuine viability before it deserves the mantle of “personhood.” It seems most unreasonable to demand that a “Potentiality” deserves the same legal standing as an existing human.

Looking at this proposition from a real world political agenda perspective - I’m constantly amazed by the bizarre right-wing ability to proclaim their conviction in: “The Right to Life” and “The Sanctity of Life”... for an unborn being, then in the same breath support a war that has inflicted a thousand “9/11’s” upon another distant, yet innocent, citizenry. Right-wingers will exclaim: but that’s self-defense! Why not ask: What about the troubled mother who must make an agonized decision based upon self-defense for herself and her existing family? How can the right-wing be so cruel to disregard the all around tragic ordeal abortion is for those involved? When will our right-wing brothers and sisters grant women their own right to self-defense, dignity, empathy ?

For a most thoughtful consideration of the dilemma look up Rachel Richardson Smith’s essay: “Abortion, Right and Wrong”