Colorado: Human rights for eggs

A measure to extend state constitutional rights to fertilized eggs creeps forward.

Published November 19, 2007 8:03PM (EST)

Activists in Colorado are pushing forward an amendment to the state Constitution that would extend constitutional human rights to all -- or, rather, legally bend the definition of what it means to be a fully realized human being. The proposed amendment rules fertilized eggs as deserving of inalienable human rights --including due process and equality of justice -- under the state Constitution. "Whatever rights and liberties and duties and responsibilities are guaranteed under the Constitution or other state laws would flow to that life," Michael J. Norton, a lawyer representing the amendment's supporters, told the New York Times. Norton added that while the measure doesn't explicitly mention abortion, it would be defined as "the destruction of a person." In other words: murder.

It's unlikely the amendment -- which has "the most sweeping language in the nation about the rights of the unborn," reports the Times -- would stop at criminalizing abortion. Deputy director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado, Toni Panettahe, suggests that its wording could be stretched to support legal challenges to birth control -- especially oral contraceptives, which make the uterus unwelcoming to an egg.

The measure encountered a roadblock last week when its wording was challenged in the Colorado Supreme Court, only to be ushered right along on its journey to the 2008 ballot.

Happy Monday!


By Tracy Clark-Flory

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