By Faye Barnhart | Guest Columnist
Colorado has one of the most extreme laws in the world. It allows children to be poisoned, scalded, stabbed, starved, dismembered or otherwise inhumanely killed by any means from all nine months of pregnancy up to the point of birth. To call these “procedures” to end the life of a living human being “healthcare” would be laughable were it not so barbaric and tragic.
Right now, Colorado allows the killing of children any time during the pregnancy. And now, extremists want to put an amendment on the Colorado ballot requiring health insurance and taxpayer funds to pay for these practices and to be added to the Colorado Constitution as a “right”. Killing people has never been a right, nor should it ever be.
Pregnancy and childbirth are healthy. Invading a mother’s body to take away from her the life of her child; there is nothing healthy about it. Putting the mother at risk for infection, hemorrhage, death and future infertility, abortion is obviously not healthy for the child being intentionally killed. Abortion violates not only what is healthy, but it violates these children’s constitutional right to live.
The United States Constitution can be interpreted to protect these children, as the right to live is guaranteed to our posterity, that can include our children and those after us, just as it protects each of us who were the “Posterity” at the time it was written. To violate that law of protection is both unconstitutional and unconscionable.
If left alone, a healthy child will have their own heartbeat by 21 days (about the time their mother suspects she may be pregnant), brain waves that we can detect by six weeks, and will move away from touch that is painful to the child by seven weeks. By the time a child enters fetal development in the second trimester (week 10 out of 40), they look just like the tiny infant that they are, sucking their thumb and able to move and jump with all fingers, toes, face and personality already visible to our naked eye.
Surely, we are not so heartless as voters to condone and participate in these children’s deaths. There is no need for abortion, as mothers can be referred to non-violent resources and options that help her out of crisis and do not involve ripping away a child from her body for the profit of a multi-billion dollar industry. Doctors can attempt to save all lives without intentionally taking the lives of children. “My body, my choice” doesn’t even make sense, because a child has their own separate body and their own unique life to live.
Healthcare should be about helping people find health. Reproductive healthcare should preserve a woman’s ability to have children. And the right to live is the most basic right for all of us who have everything that makes us human and alive from the moment we are conceived within the protective sphere of our mother.
Instead of pushing an already extreme law down the throats of voters into the Colorado Constitution to cause taxpayers to pay for an agenda we don’t need, shouldn’t our Constitution rather protect everyone, regardless how small or defenseless we may be? The purpose of law is to protect the vulnerable and weak from the tyrant. Abortion is tyrannical and has no place in our Colorado Constitution. If anything, our Constitution should promote the exact opposite.
Faye Barnhart is a Life Affirming Specialist and Women’s Advocate of 19 years, served in a federal think tank on the co-occurrence of adult and child violence and in pregnancy care centers. A prelaw student and aid at the Colorado state Capitol, she finished her degree while raising children as a single parent. She is now married to a farmer in rural Colorado.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.