On April 4, 2022, Governor Jared Polis of Colorado signed into law HB 22-1279. This law supposedly guarantees the “fundamental right” to abortion and contraception. The new law is quite simple and easy to read in about two minutes if you can manage to stomach your way through it. It should also be evident that with HB 22-1279 the abortion debate reached a new low in Colorado and likely on a national level going forward.
While this may seem like another run of the mill abortion law on the surface, the text contains a slightly new variation that has the potential to dramatically shift the so-called Overton Window on the abortion debates. The pro-abortionists are now moving away from pretending that the unborn are not human persons to simply declaring they have no rights anyway. But first, some background.
Colorado’s Love Affair with Death and Vice
The bill was presented to Polis to sign after passing the Colorado General Assembly on a party-line vote (Democrats in favor of course) with some notable efforts to curtail and delay it as much as possible by a few Republicans and other pro-life groups. They were simply outvoted.
At the end of the day, none of this was surprising. Colorado (particularly the Denver and Boulder area) now has the reputation for being “blue” after mass liberal Democrat migrations into the state from California in the past 30 years combined with a very weak and uncourageous Republican Party to effectively turn Colorado into a political gateway to hell with a scenic backdrop.
Abortion has been legal in Colorado since 1967—before the U.S. Supreme Court used Roe v. Wade to make up a national constitutional right to kill babies. In that year, Republican (yes, REPUBLICAN) governor John Love signed the abortion bill into law.
I asked a friend of mine and fellow parishioner whose mother was one of the most active anti-abortion, pro-life activists at the time to give me a little background on this. She said that when abortion was first legalized in 1967 there was a discernible seismic disturbance at the capitol building at the time the bill was signed; strong enough to make the chandeliers swing.
My friend’s mother attended the committee hearing in 1967 when the proposed law was being debated. The room was so crowded she was forced to stand behind the elected representatives sitting at the hearing table [I don’t think they allow that anymore!]. She told me that
“As testimony was given, the legislators passed notes to one another. One note, that my mother saw, was a tally of “yes” votes — the fix was in and the legislators were not influenced at all by the testimony. My mother said it was most disheartening to witness the way the legislative process really worked.”
Yes, the fix was in then, and the fix is in now. At the time Colorado’s HB 22-1279 was signed into law, the state did not have any gestational restrictions on abortion that some states have nor any partial birth abortion restrictions. None. It was already open season on babies. So why go through the theatrics?
Presumably, Colorado Democrats expect the U.S. Supreme Court to either do away with Roe completely or curtail it to such a degree that it would interfere with the ability of abortionists to conduct their demonic bloody sacrifices at the local baby slaughter mill.
The Denver mill is one of the largest in the United States as far as the number of babies killed each year—located right there in a predominately black neighborhood in the Mile High City.
As seen in the cover photo of this post, the facility itself displays a “proud” sign in their windows to make sure the world knows they work for the devil. Afterall, if you’re going to commit sin, you might as well sin boldly as Martin Luther says and proclaim loudly your allegiance to Satan. It’s telling how certain political movements cling tightly to the sin of “pride” as their slogan.
From Denying Personhood to Denying Rights
Now, all of this may sound like customary, typical “oh-hum” pro-abortion Democrat evil that is so ubiquitous it’s easy to just gloss over it as just another un-shocking victory for Satan in our modern culture.
But I wanted to point out a few things in this new law that should wake up even the most lukewarm out there. Indeed, the abortion debate has reached a new low and one particular provision makes that clear:
“A FERTILIZED EGG, EMBRYO, OR FETUS DOES NOT HAVE INDEPENDENT OR DERIVATIVE RIGHTS UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS STATE.”
What’s amazing about this provision is that it is one of the first times that pro-aborts had to admit they need to deny unborn babies their right to live. Hat tip to Fr. David Nix who brilliantly opened my eyes to that reality.
Think about that for a minute. In the old days, pro-abortionists at least had the courtesy to lie to everyone else when they claimed unborn babies were not actually human beings. Just a clump of cells they would say. Because of that the argument goes, there simply was no problem with having an abortion because you weren’t actually slaying another person.
But the rhetoric is shifting now, and this provision in Colorado law in so many words is conceding the truth of what Democrats always knew but were too afraid to say: unborn babies are human but can still be destroyed anyway. This is because only humans have “rights” in the sense of natural rights, which this Colorado law is attempting to deny unborn babies. By denying a right, they are conceding the unborn could have a right.
You see, they’re shifting the window of acceptable political discourse. Now it is no longer a question of their humanity but a question of the unborn baby’s value as a person to society and the mother.
This may not seem like a big deal, but it is. It goes to the heart of the Gospel and the spirtual battle we are all called to engage in. It’s bad enough to question a human being’s personhood to begin with but acknowledging their personhood and then declaring they are not worthy of love takes it to a new level.
Let’s just remind ourselves of the chilling warning St. Paul gave us:
If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. (1 Corin. 13:1-2)
I would not want to be the guy that put my signature on that law. I wouldn’t want to be a pro-choice “Catholic” who voted for that guy either. Let’s just leave it at that.
What if Roe is Overturned?
Ahh, you say, perhaps I am reading to much into this? This law is simply a reaction to the potential that the current U.S. Supreme Court is going to overturn Roe v. Wade and that Colorado simply wants to ensure that mothers can still avoid the financial burden of raising a child if they so choose.
This argument rests on the belief that if the U.S. Supreme Court reverses itself on Roe v. Wade that individual states would still have the flexibility to decide for themselves whether to make abortion legal or not—the beauty of federalism, many on the right would argue.
To some extent that is true, but not necessarily. While Roe did find a constitutional right to kill one’s own children in the Constitution, overturning Roe can mean different things depending on what the Court decides to do. Remember that the opinion itself also specifically held that unborn children are not “persons” for purposes of 14th Amendment protection.
And yes, this is basically the same argument the Court accepted in the Dred Scott case that denied black slaves protections under the U.S. Constitution, although it is much worse now because at the time of Dred Scott there was no 14th Amendment.
However, it is entirely possible that the Court, even as early as this year, may decide that those children ARE persons for purposes of 14th Amendment protections. This would be a major problem for pro-aborts—and state laws like HB 22-1279 would not help them at all.
If the Court were to hold that unborn babies are actually “persons” entitled to protections under the Constitution, then Colorado’s attempt to declare that unborn babies have no rights would automatically be null and void. In other words, no—it would not just “go back to the states.”
Abortion Debate Reaches a New Low
It is a very dangerous and quite unprecedented thing Colorado is doing here. Usually, legislatures pass laws that create rights that never existed before. Rarely, do they pass laws to proclaim a right does not exist.
To some extent, it literally makes no sense whatsoever. If I did not have a preexisting (“natural” as John Locke would say) right then there is no reason why the state would need to make sure I don’t have one. If I did have a preexisting (natural) right to life, then the state legislature has no authority to take it away in the first place.
The point here is that the State of Colorado is attempting to do something that harkens back to the Dred Scott case and is not only non-sensical evil but moves the goal posts on the debate. Governor Polis and his Democrat friends in the General Assembly just declared that even if unborn babies are real persons, they can still be killed with no repercussions whatsoever.
They’re moving beyond the false pretenses that gripped the abortion debate for decades. Now they might as well say “yea, unborn babies may be human and have natural born rights, but so what? We just declared they do not in this state—because you know—democracy and we rule this state now and have more voters than you.”
I suspect this line of argument is going to spread throughout the country as states take up sides on whether they want to offer unborn babies legal protection from being slaughtered. How in the world we got to the point where individual state governments even think they have the authority to decide who has a “right” to be born is a topic reserved for future posts. For a head start on that, check out my Independence Day commentary from last year.
For now, just remember that the reaction to the Dred Scott case played an important role in fueling the Civil War in the 1860s. Are we courageous enough to risk the same for unborn babies today?