Log In


Reset Password
Opinion Editorial Cartoons Op-Ed Editorials Letters to the Editor

Senate Bill 268

Brouhaha between Ellen Roberts and Planned Parenthood is pure politics

State Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, has mounted a spirited and eloquent defense of her support for Senate Bill 268 – called “Concerning offenses against an unborn child” – in the recently concluded legislative session. Lawmakers should be able to explain their positions, and Roberts is good at it.

She spoke of it at the Herald’s public editorial board meeting May 20, and she wrote about it in an op-ed published in the Herald on May 24 (which subsequently appeared in The Denver Post).

What she does not explain, however, is that SB 268 was a completely unnecessary piece of political theater. Its language seems carefully tuned to spark controversy, and its stated goal could probably have been achieved without dancing through the minefields of the abortion wars.

One impetus for SB 268 was the horrific March 18 assault on a pregnant Longmont woman whose abdomen was slit open by an attacker in an apparent attempt at an amateur Caesarian. The woman survived; her fetus did not.

Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett said that he could not file murder charges against the woman accused of the crime because Colorado law “defines homicide as the killing of a person by another. It defines a person ... as a human being who had been born and was alive at the time of the homicidal act.”

The lack of a murder charge does not mean the attacker will go free. Garnett has charged the alleged perpetrator with eight felonies, all of which he says he can prove. Garnett has said the 34-year-old woman accused of the crime may “very well die in prison.”

But if that were not enough, the Legislature could have crafted a tightly written bill that would have increased penalties for such violent acts without employing any of the red-flag words that surround discussion of reproduction. It could have made “terminating a woman’s pregnancy without her permission” punishable by life in prison without any mention of abortion-war catchphrases.

Instead, SB 268 turned entirely on hot-button words. It defined a “person ... as a human being and includes an unborn child at every stage of gestation from conception until live birth.”

“Unborn child” and “from conception until live birth” is the language of abortion opponents. And defining a fetus as a person has been a consistent focus of those groups for years.

Not surprisingly, pro-choice forces pushed back. But that may well have been half the point. When Roberts was questioned about her support for SB 268, she said Planned Parenthood was “attacking” her, which is not a bad place to be for a Republican.

She also pointed to the fact that some anti-abortion groups opposed SB 268 because it explicitly exempted anything the mother did to her fetus, medical procedures done with the mother’s permission and legally prescribed medication.

But what is more interesting, that some abortion foes opposed the bill because it protected legal abortions, or that others supported it because they still got the word “person” in there?

Planned Parenthood can be fairly accused of rising to the bait, especially after SB 268 died in committee. This was never a serious threat to reproductive freedom.

But Roberts is also a little too obvious in trying to take her half out of the middle. Courting the anti-abortion right while simultaneously touting a pro-choice record is not compromise, but Kabuki.



Reader Comments