Colorado Ballot

Personhood USA has announced that the petition signatures for the personhood amendment to the state constitution have been certified, and that the amendment will be on the statewide ballot in November. (http://www.personhoodusa.com/press-release/personhood-certified-colorado-ballot) The amendment reads: "Section 32. Person defined. As used in sections 3*, 6**, and 25*** of Article II of the state constitution, the term “person” shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being."

The amendment process is different in Texas as it first requires action by the state legislature, which only meets 140 days every two years. However, while the amendment process might be more difficult in Texas than in other states, we already have the benefit of the personhood language already in established Texas law. Tex. Penal Code §1.07 states that a “Person” “means an individual, corporation, or association." (Tex. Penal Code §1.07.38) An "individual" (the term used in the definition of "Person") "means a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth." (Tex. Penal Code §1.07.26)

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that we all have equal protection under the laws. Even the Roe v. Wade decision proclaimed that “if this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment."

From the beginning, the driving force behind this blog has been that Texas laws allowing abortion (and thus excluding children in the womb from equal protection of the laws against homicide) are blatantly unconstitutional. Our letter to Governor Rick Perry spelled this out. We need to pray that the efforts of Personhood USA in Colorado and other states are successful, but we also need to keep demanding that our officials bring Texas law into compliance with the Constitution of the United States and offer to unborn children the same protection of the right to life that we all now have.