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No on Amendment 48

The article below may be copied or published but must remain intact, with attribution to the author. I also request that the words “First published in the Durango Herald” accompany any publication. For more information, please write the author at: richard@population-matters.org.

 

No on Amendment 48

© Richard Grossman MD, 2008

 

 

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

 

            “I am sorry, Mrs. Folk. There is nothing I can do.” I am in my office, holding ultrasound pictures. The Folks are sitting in front of me, looking dumbfounded. Two of their three children are present; the oldest is at school.

            “These pictures show a tubal pregnancy. It is very early, but we can still see the fetal heartbeat. It is clearly outside of your uterus.” Mrs. Folk is crying now.

             “In the past we used to treat ectopic pregnancies with surgery, or even just medicine. That is not possible now. Your chances of dying from this pregnancy are about fifty-fifty.”

            Approximately one pregnancy in 200 is in the wrong place. Although a woman’s uterus is wonderfully adapted to nourishing a developing fetus, her tubes are not. When a pregnancy grows in the tube, it tears the fragile tissue, causing pain and internal bleeding. Women still die of tubal pregnancies.

            Is the above scenario some sort of science fiction, set in some remote hard-hearted future? No, not if proposed Amendment 48 passes this November election. This scenario could happen right here in Colorado next year.

            Clearly 48 was drafted to stop all abortions in Colorado (even after rape or incest). It is short—and extremely deceptive. Nicknamed the “Personhood Amendment”, 48 reads: “As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of article II of the State Constitution, the terms ’person’ or ‘persons’ shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization.”

            Section 25 of the Colorado Constitution states: “Due process of law. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” If a developing fetus (or even a newly fertilized egg) is defined as a person, then anyone who interrupts a pregnancy, no matter if it is potentially lethal to the mother, could be punished. The woman herself would be an accomplice. This would mean that anyone, including a physician who does surgery to save a woman’s life because of a tubal pregnancy, would be subject to the same penalties as a first degree murderer. Would the police have to investigate women who have miscarriages, too?

            The proposed amendment is so extreme that, if 48 were to pass, it would create legal havoc in our state. It would take years and millions of dollars to work out the legal implications.

            This amendment would not only prevent abortion, but it might also prevent many forms of contraception. Antiabortion people claim that hormonal birth control and IUDs cause abortions. Their evidence for this is weak, and is at odds with the majority of medical experts including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—my professional organization.

            The sad fact is that the amendment would probably increase the number of abortions! Making abortion illegal doesn’t stop women from trying to interrupt pregnancies—it makes them use desperate means. For instance, when abortion became legal in Norway, the abortion rate didn’t increase. Women did get better care, however. Remember that the best way to prevent abortions is with access to good contraception.

            Moreover, proposed Amendment 48 would prevent couples from taking advantage of many infertility treatments. In vitro fertilization would be banned because of the risk of losing an embryo—defined as a person.

            The people who wrote this proposed amendment (and the 131,245 people who signed petitions to put it on the ballot in November) appear to be honest, God-fearing Coloradoans. Their website lists physicians who support the amendment, but very, very few live in Colorado! In fact, they are outsiders testing the waters in our state to see how they can control women’s reproductive lives. Because of their efforts to impose their strict religious beliefs on everyone, they are the closest thing we have in the USA to the Taliban.

            This proposed amendment would punish parents and physicians who believe that all children should be planned and loved. It has been centuries since people were punished so severely for trying to help women control their fertility. There is strong evidence that the motivation to seek out and kill “witches” in Colonial times was to eradicate women who held the secrets of contraception. This was one way men could retaliate against women who knew more than they did.

            Don’t let religious zealots control women’s lives in Colorado. Vote “NO” to proposed Amendment 48. Go to www.protectfamiliesprotectchoices.org for more information.

 

Published October, 2008

Categories
Durango Herald Environment Population Women's Issues

Quotes on Population

The article below may be copied or published but must remain intact, with attribution to the author. I also request that the words “First published in the Durango Herald” accompany any publication. For more information, please write the author at: richard@population-matters.org

 

Quotes on Population

© Richard Grossman MD, 2008

 

“If you wait until the frogs and toads have croaked their last to take some action, you’ve missed the point.”

Kermit the Frog

 

For years I have been saving occasional quotes that I have run across. Each has some connection with population issues. Here are some of my favorites. I hope that they are meaningful for you, too.

 

Concerning the rights of an individual woman to control her fertility:

 

“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” Margaret Sanger

 

“The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.” Germaine Greer

 

“We want far better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.” Dora Russell

 

“I was shocked when Tabea said she wanted no children. ‘I have seen my mother cradle too many dead babes,’ she said. ‘And I heard Oholibama scream for three days before she gave up her life for Iti. I am not willing to suffer like that.’” The Red Tent, Anita Diamant

 

Religious thinkers vary in their stand on contraception. Many have not come to grips with the fact that we are abusing our planet’s resources:

 

“If we’re going to use artificial means to support life, we’ll also have to use it to limit life.” Thomas Berry, Catholic theologian

 

“Let our lives be in accordance with our convictions of right, each striving to carry out our principles.” Lucretia Mott, Quaker abolitionist

 

“We are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live his life for him alone.” Albert Schweitzer, Lutheran theologian

 

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the land. But it’s a greater sin for me to let children die. On the other hand, it goes against the Bible. We’re between a rock and a hard place.” José Martinez, Latin American worker

 

Major religions accept the rhythm method, which makes use of the infertile time in a woman’s cycle, but not all accept modern methods of family planning:

 

“It is now lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.” H.L. Menken

 

Environmental awareness only started 50 years ago, but indigenous peoples have understood the limitations of our planet for eons:

 

“Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you too will die.” John Hollow Horn, Oglala Lakota

 

“In a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Japan, and the United States, thick with replicating primates, the colonies enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the biosphere with mass extinctions.” The Hot Zone, Richard Preston

 

“Driving gas-guzzling cars should become as unfashionable as wearing fur.” Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell group

 

“Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage.” Jacques Cousteau

 

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” Economist Kenneth Boulding

 

There are consequences of too much consumption and too many people. Some of these are inevitable and no amount of technology will prevent them:

 

“The chief cause of problems is solutions.” Eric Sevareid

 

“There is no trifling with nature; it is always true, grave and severe; it is always in the right, and the faults and errors fall to our share.” Goethe

 

“…democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears.” Isaac Asimov

 

There is hope:

 

“Almost anything you do will seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” Gandhi

 

“One must begin in one’s own life the private solutions that only in turn become public solutions.” Wendell Berry

 

“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead