Bella is not a perfect movie; but I think it’s an important one, and just about everything you would want in a film.

It is a bit choppy in its use of a creative mix of flashbacks and foreword-shots to force the viewer to discover what is happening a little bit at a time. This necessitates that the plot be kept simple so the viewer can figure it out, so the challenge is never overwhelming and more like putting a puzzle together. Just like the way you hear neighborhood gossip, in bits and pieces a little bit at a time in no special order.

Bella is the story of a young single waitress who gets fired because of a few absences caused by pregnancy related illness, and about how the restaurant’s chef is attracted to her and eventually adopts her baby. The plot is actually a good deal more complicated as it portrays the emotional and ethical struggles over abortion in their broader social context.

Many have seen this as a pro-life movie ( 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 ), because it takes a stand against the abortion trend; and in the positive sense of promoting the better option for choosing life it is indeed pro-life, since it illustrates how real human life is not some isolated existence – not the mere fact of existence as an embryo or as another body count statistic – but rather the quality of the interconnectedness of caring relationships that sustains us all, and which we each need.

But I would argue Bella is actually a pro-choice presentation when it comes to the politics of abortion.

The story works because it respectfully leaves the ultimate choice of whether to have an abortion in the hands of the mother; and it only works because someone was motivated to help the mother find a hopeful future for her baby. The rights of the fetus are not in focus, and quite properly, an emphasis on preventing abortion is not presented as the pro-life message.

Bella emphasizes that for a human being to thrive a child should have a loving family – a baby should be wanted. Social conditions need to exist where families and neighborhoods characterized by positive relationships can thrive. The mother had nothing to offer her child. The chef had all the connections for a rich family life.

Bella is pro-life in a positive sense. It is against abortion when you have an option to provide a viable family for your baby, an option the film recognizes not everyone has, though perhaps every pregnant mother wants it for her unborn child. And it demonstrates that it will take a lot of interpersonal love and caring outreach to unwed mothers to really address the challenge of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies.

I wonder how many pro-lifers really understand the social implications of this film. Or if they can still think their main responsibility is to protest abortion and just get laws against it passed? There really is a big difference between simply being against something and taking action to reduce the need for it.

How can we help reduce the pressures that lead people to see abortion as the solution to their problems? There are a wide range of preventive and alternative measures that could reduce the abortion rate, and there is also a need for more preschool options to support working families as children grow older and young families continue to need support at the most vulnerable time of a child’s development.

Pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion.

Pro-choice means allowing mothers to choose a real life for their child.

Supporting pro-choice means promoting a social environment where children will be wanted, cared for, and where they can thrive.

Everybody seems to be impressed with how evangelicals have become so much more socially conscious nowadays; but as someone who grew up in this tradition, I am as distressed as ever about what went on at Saddleback Church this past weekend.

What is so great about presidential candidates meeting in a church? The kind of religious group candidates meet with should not be an issue.

What horrifies me is the report card format used to measure the candidates, particularly when the issues are as significant and complicated as abortion. There really is a sense in which the medium becomes the message. The message must adapt to the medium, and therefore becomes shaped by it. In effect, moral questions become variations of asking for the meaning of life in 25 words or less.

The warts of the report card method for measuring political candidates are highlighted on the Jim Lehrer Online News Hour video excerpts which highlight the abortion portion of the proceedings at Saddleback Church.

To me it plays like a cartoon that creates the humor of grief — not the humor we usually think of as comedy.

Warren: At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?

Obama: “I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is that there is I a moral and ethical element to this issue. And so I think anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue, I think, is not paying attention.”

Warren: At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?

McCain: “At the moment of conception,” he answers promptly, with a slight “did I get it right?” inflection we can all recall from school days. Then the crowd claps as if he has just won a prize. McCain goes on to tell a touching personal story of his own adopted daughter; but this is irrelevant to answering a question about when human rights should be legally compelled in every case, which is what “getting human rights” is all about. But the crowd has been induced to produce more applause, and we are left here with a little vignette of the irrationalism that can be fostered in churches.

Shaping the Message

Notice there is a slight difference in these questions. The first question asks for a thoughtful opinion (“in your view”). The second one asks for a straightforward answer (“what… is”). In each case the requested answer was supplied. Perhaps this was because Pastor Rick Warren just responded to each man naturally because he really knew each one fairly well and wanted to make him feel comfortable. But the fact is that each one was “set up” to produce a different kind of response, and they produced it.

Much more significant, though, is the response of the crowd to Senator McCain’s precise and absolutist answer, which stands in sharp contrast to Senator Obama’s nuanced response. The crowd wanted the easy answer. Who cares about difficult cases? Let those people suffer in silence. The law of the land should enforce the right of a not yet implanted ovum to survive (since fertilization happens before implantation).

I suppose it would have been impolitic for either candidate to answer that “babies” should have human rights from the moment they are defined as “babies.” That would have been the Solomon-like answer; but we would not have accepted this response in our day. This answer would have pushed the issue into the kind of discussion it deserved, and the format did not allow for this kind of dialogue.

Ultimately such snippets of moral opinion by political leaders may have extremely little to do with their policy decisions. Only a more extensive discussion could have determined that. Apparently, from all reports I’ve seen, NOTHING was actually learned about how either candidate would actually lead the country on the abortion issue.

I did not see the complete televised discussion; but most Americans will not see it either. Most will not even see this News Hour excerpt. Those that care about the abortion issue will just erroneously hear that McCain does not believe in abortion and Obama does. There was no significant discussion of the abortion issue in this venue. When we read about the Lincoln-Douglas debates that focused on the moral issue of slavery in their era of American history, we see the candidates themselves conducted extended public discussions of this issue.

Now all we want to know is whether someone is Pro or Con.

Christians know Jesus said “If you are not on my side, you are against me. If you don’t gather in the harvest with me, you scatter it.” (Matthew 12:30) So we know that Jesus has drawn a line between faithful followers and those who are not.

But judging by how some Christians are reacting to the abortion issue it seems like some of us have let Jesus’ teaching form a paradigm in our mind for a host of other issues. This makes it easy, without even thinking about it, to identify following Jesus with following a political leader. If Obama is for abortion, then he must be against Jesus. We don’t even care if he really is following Jesus.

That really seems to be the template set in the brains of some Christians. Give credit to Rick Warren for trying to dispel that notion, even if at the same time he pandered to the majority that pays his salary.

Unfortunately this type of staging does not play well in the minds of many young people outside the Christian camp. They see these snippets and the mindless clapping in the name Christ, and they push further away. It’s hard for them to tell whether this is a scene from Saturday Night Live or if is it real.

Social action, yes. But social action characterized by love that draws people to Christ — not actions that push them away from him.

I think the message got distorted by the medium in this venue.

HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion

In what it must consider an act of Wilberforcian moral leadership, the Bush administration seems to want to force an increase in the American birth rate and remove freedoms Americans currently enjoy in the name of freedom of choice for health care providers.

They propose to do this with the kind of superficial logic that manipulates thoughts the way someone first learning a foreign language manipulates words in a dictionary. Government officials transferred the reasoning they deciphered from public polling data into legal arguments as if the public has a consistent and logically held medical and ethical position on fertilization and abortion issues. They translated generic polling data into precise legal arguments.

You will have to read the logic for yourself as documented in this source; only the barest outline can be afforded in this post.

Here are key excerpts from this source:

There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus).

Up until now, the federal government followed the definition of pregnancy accepted by the American Medical Association and … the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is: pregnancy begins at implantation.

So [now] HHS proposes that anyone can enforce his or her own definition of abortion “within the bounds of reason.”

The practical outcome of this logic led to the next step in the following headline:

Redefining abortion

Federal officials considering a rule allowing health care workers to refuse to provide contraceptives

Already “an existing regulation allows health care providers with objections to abortion to abstain from providing it to patients.”

By extending the definition of abortion to cover contraceptives, the new rule being promoted at HHS “would allow health care workers who object to abortion on moral or religious grounds to refuse to counsel women on their birth control options or supply contraceptives.”

Who’s “Good” does this new rule serve?

1. Obviously this rule is not for the good of unwanted babies who will be born, since many providers may opt out. Nor is it for the good of poor people who will be channeled into less than healthy options for dealing with the resulting consequences of unwanted pregnancies or alternative attempts to avoid them. Given the state of the economy, we can be fairly sure that there is no intent to ensure that other providers will be made available in every situation.

2. The rule that exempted health care providers with objections to abortion from providing it to patients was good because it allows them to avoid the direct act of what they perceive as killing. But indirect acts such as providing supplies cannot so simply and so arbitrarily be prescribed because this is a far more complicated issue. Do everyday store clerks have the right to refuse to sell condoms? One can at least imagine a host of legal controversies and more business for the legal profession as a result. One can even imagine a backlash against the original exemption.

3. According to the Houston Chronicle, this federal administrative rule would probably void a great many state laws. This rule is obviously not for the good of democracy, because it does not reflect a democratic decision-making process nor does it come close to reflecting decisions made by that process in the past.

4. Instead, this rule is widely viewed as payback to the Christian and religious right for its support of the Bush administration. Perhaps it is a cynical concession to the belief that the Democrats will win in November and immediately overturn it. But what if they don’t win? After all, John McCain has sided with the religious right on abortion. Real leaders do not play with fire like this. One has to wonder whether tainted hiring practices have also affected this area of the Bush administration.

Fanaticism takes what is good to an extreme. As we pointed out above, exempting conscientious objectors from providing abortions was good. But sneaking in exemptions for indirect contributions, however defined, without extensive debate and democratic decision-making is fanaticism.

Avoiding fanaticism involves a bit of relativistic thinking. A truly Christian approach to social change is not absolutist. Following the Apostle Paul’s example, one does not simply appeal to God’s revelation, but also recognizes the importance of social mores, because the objective of God’s law is love and peace. The goal of such social action is always to gain voluntary agreement.

What is Good about this Rule?

Absolutely nothing as far as I can see, for reasons already cited above.

Then why is it proposed?

The stated reason based on public opinion polls cited and refuted above is also invalid. A professional philosopher could provide a better explanation and the Bush administration would have done well to consult one. Even research specialists would be able to spot some of the errors in this approach since they would recognize the limitations of interpreting social surveys.

The underlying rationale for the rule is patent, however. The rule extends the likelihood of denial of abortions by giving high status to the definition of pregnancy as simply fertilization (apart from implantation) and by allowing providers such as pharmacists who contribute indirectly to opt out of providing.

In giving “equal” status to such a narrow ethical stance it allows that view to dominate the broader approach much like having a significant number of non-drinkers in a church tends to mean that alcohol may not be served on church property even though there are also a significant number of drinkers, who may actually be in the majority. The strong must accept the weak, but the weak do not have to accept the strong, because the weak think they are right. A teaching that was intended to express mutual concern becomes a tool for domination of others in express violation of Jesus’ commands to the contrary. Christians who deny Jesus’ paradigm as they contend for the “kingdom” in the civil arena are doing no better than those Jesus condemned for their practice of Corban.

Incidents like these help us begin to understand why Jesus predicted that both the sheep and the goats will be surprised about the verdicts on judgment day!

I’ve already expressed my view on the fertilization issue in a previous post. It boils down to the belief that human beings are called to be more than mere physical matter, including even the aspects of soul that the Bible always associates with the body (which is everything that fertilization represents). We must be “called” in some sense to become human. In a Christian theological sense, we are all are born spiritually dead. To have any spark of life and a chance of making it, individuals have to be wanted. My mother-in-law used to tell my children they used to be “a gleam in your father’s eye.” For communities to survive, older members need to reproduce and draw younger members into them. There are no stand-alone human beings.

Our responsibility is to draw individuals into human relationships and into relationship with God. It is not an isolatable responsibility to protect fertilized eggs. You can’t ethically fulfill the duty of protecting a fertilized egg without also fulfilling the duty to draw that being into the human family. A commitment of our country to a higher birth rate given our history and current economic conditions must be accompanied by a correspondingly huge investment in relevant social services supporting this commitment. It is the very fact that this rule is being introduced in such a backdoor manner that demonstrates that it does not reflect the high moral caliber that its backers would like to claim for it.

I do not believe that the “fertilized” ovum that do not implant are human beings that will some day be resurrected like everyone else. But that is what you as a Christian believe if you believe what the Bush administration is promoting to take precedent over other established laws.

Does that sound “good” to you?

Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore ‘Abortion’

By Robert Pear

NEW YORK TIMES

April 5, 2008

This report lets everyone outside the specialized world of medical librarianship know that the world’s largest database on reproductive health - Popline - with more than 360,000 records and articles on family planning, fertility and sexually transmitted diseases, had stopped allowing researchers to find articles by using the word abortion as a search term.

Why in the world did they do this? 

The New York Times and other news sources have made preliminary investigations (e.g. 1, 2, 3); but perhaps none have presented the results better than the noted British medical journal BMJ.  I have labeled the essential elements of their presentation below to highlight the main points.

WHAT HAPPENED:  The world’s largest database for reproductive health, which is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), last week made it impossible to search its contents for the word “abortion.”

WHY IT HAPPENED:  The explanation given for the ban by the administrator of the website, which is called Popline (population information online) was that because the project was funded by federal money it was thought “best for now.”

BACKGROUND:  Under the US president, George Bush, USAID has been banned from giving funds to any foreign organisation that performs, refers, or counsels on abortion, regardless of whether abortion is legal in their country.

ANALYSIS:  Critics were quick to assume that the decision to ban the word “abortion” as a search term was political.

US federal funded website bans “abortion” as search term, by Bob Roehr;  BMJ  2008;336:792-793 (12 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39545.500833.DB

Once this ban had created a large public outcry among medical librarians and others, it was quickly reversed by a top administrator of the program.

Most likely nobody will ever be able to prove that political motives led to this policy.  It might simply be that a few influential people who were so inclined had their own way in a small out-of-the-way office that affects the overall operation.  Unless others notice and speak up when these kinds of changes are made, the changes tend to become permanent because after a while people say it’s always been done this way.

A change as radical as this will not be accepted if it is noticed and enough people say something because George Orwell has already alerted us to the dangers of governments attempting to determine truth. But people who want changes such as this try to sneak them in because they hope no one will notice in time to make a difference.  

This case is an example of how government can abuse power.  It may seem like a small issue; but worlds of information are uncovered by a single word, or hidden by the absence of a word; and therefore what we discover and learn can be affected by one word.  As a government agency, USAID made a decision to restrict information access by not allowing researchers to use a very commonly accepted search term.  In an online environment, there was no practical reason for making such a restriction since it did not offer any financial savings or improvement to the system.

This case is also an example of how the public must respond in order to get government to change. Medical librarians and others responded en masse individually and through their professional organizations to this issue. It is sometimes said that there are three branches of government to serve as checks and balances on each other’s powers; and we therefore view governmental power as divided between those three branches. 

That’s fine when we consider that all three branches get their power from the people. But since the delegation of power from the people primarily occurs when they vote, more often than not, it is more helpful to think of government as four powers that should be balanced: executive, legislative, judiciary, and the people. 

We the people need to be supporting or in some cases pushing back against our government when it is making mistakes, in order to keep it in line with what we believe are constitutional principles.  We are still the power on which our republic rests even when we are not in the ballot box.  We should take care how we exercise that power at all times.

US scientists close to creating artificial life

Like all good science fiction, this story contains futuristic elements which have implications for today’s world.  If we can create artificial life, would there be a difference between these two options:  (1) killing off artificial life forms before they mature, and (2) aborting human embryos?

This story begins, “US scientists have taken a major step toward creating the first ever artificial life form by synthetically reproducing the DNA of a bacteria.”   

The story itself contains enough elements so that partisans can have great fun as they debate the propriety of this research.  My immediate reaction, however, is to look further down the road and ask about the ethical challenges that will be raised by this project.

Thinking in religious concepts, since someday these humans will have created these beings much as God created living beings, then in some sense these scientists will have become like God to them.  Like Moses was to Pharaoh, will they be God in a unique sense to these life forms they have created?

Reflecting back on Genesis 1 we see that most of the creating that was done there was accomplished by making use of pre-existing materials, just like the scientists who are now trying to create life.  Their theory is that creating life is a purely mechanical process.  Some readers will think no further because they assume that we will never have to worry about creating “real” life because only God can do that.  These are “peace in their own time” advocates who are willing to forfeit reaching a large portion of the educated world with the gospel message.

For the rest of us, there are two basic directions we can go when we want to explore our moral responsibility in this area.  The What is Life? direction is favored by most biblically-based Pro-Lifers at this time.  They basically want to argue that God breathing “the breath of life” into the human as described in Genesis means that life is much more than matter, but also consists of a spiritual substance.  We cannot debate this complicated issue here.  Suffice it to say that literary evidence indicates that this phrase simply indicates that the person or animal is alive in the usual sense.

Ethical arguments that depend on the definition of life become technical and legalistic, and inevitably lead to immoral behavior since people will always find a way to do what they want to do anyway.  The bankruptcy of this legalistic approach to social policy is illustrated, in part, by the track record of Pro-Life states according to one report…

Foster care payment rates are lowest in pro-life states. The willingness of the state to aid needy children who remained with their mothers was negatively correlated with pro-life content of the laws. In other words, pro-life states are determined to prevent women from having abortions but seem unwilling to provide a decent level of support for those children after birth.

The final measure of state willingness to aid children-the level of education spending per child enrolled in kindergarten through twelfth grade-also was negatively correlated with the pro-life content of state abortion statues. In fact, it appears that the pro-choice states are more committed to providing for the society’s weakest and most vulnerable than are the pro-life states.  (CET, 2001)

I think a more scientifically and biblically accurate, and a more helpful approach to this challenge is to ask:  
What Do We Want? 

• Do we want all embryos to grow to maturity, regardless of whether they are being raised in families that want them?
• Do we want every life that gets started to have to continue to exist as long as possible no matter what?
• What kind of a world do we want to create?

These are the kinds of questions that should frame the debate about the ethics of life, about abortion, and about end-of-life ethics. 

It’s not too early to be answering these questions, because another recent headline tells us…

 Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years 

Besides that, we need the answers now.

Court Clears Way for Egg Rights Showdown

by P. Solomon Banda

Associated Press (Nov 13, 2007)

The Colorado Supreme Court has cleared the way for the anti-abortion group, Colorado for Equal Rights, to collect signatures for a ballot measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person.  If 76,000 signatures are collected within the next six months, Colorado voters will be forced to decide whether to approve a measure which would give fertilized human embryos the state constitutional protections of inalienable rights, justice and due process.

Nothing could be more obvious than to conclude that human cells at every stage of development constitute human life.  The question our society wants us to ask for legal purposes is at what point do these cells become a person. That point is when the power of the state will begin to enforce all the constitutional rights to which every individual is entitled.

As one supporter of the proposed Colorado amendment says, “If it’s a human being, it’s a person, and hey, they deserve equal rights under our law.”

This logic is based on the one-dimensional logic of ontology, with its assumption that the objective, physical status of the human being determines its human personhood and therefore its human rights.

Those who take the teachings of Jesus seriously would not uncritically accept this one-dimensional reasoning, however.

Jesus demonstrated that more that mere existence is needed in order to have the life God intended when he said…

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7:21-23 NIV)

To experience human life in all its dimensions one must experience life in relation to God; and even apart from God, we only experience our created life as human beings when we experience it in relationship with each other.  We must be valued by another in order to have value.  A baby that is not nurtured dies.  Our mere existence alone does not give us value: we must also be valued.  That is true beginning at our conception and remains so throughout our existence.  We will find our strongest identity needs fulfilled in our relationship with God; but we also have daily practical needs we depend on others to supply.

Jesus strongly emphasized our inter-connectedness when he taught his followers the importance of forgiveness, but then left it up to them to decide who would be admitted into his kingdom, assigning his followers the responsibility to serve as a virtual gateway to God’s forgiveness in their earthly community - “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19; cf. Matthew 18:15-20).  Jesus wanted his followers to be known for their love for one another.

That we only exist in relationship, and therefore do not have value simply because we exist but because we are also valued may sound oxymoronic, as if the two aspects of value automatically go together.  But this is not so.

Mechanistic processes are not usually quite that preferential.  Natural processes apparently do not expend extraordinary effort to preserve every fertilized human ovum.  Many are lost at various stages after conception: “About 15 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, most of which occur between the 4th and 12th weeks of pregnancy.”  If lost at the ovum level, they might never even be noticed.

All human beings must also accept the reality of separation from their loved ones by death at some point.  As health technology has improved, people are more and more forced into a position traditionally left to God and must make decisions that affect how long they or their loved ones will live.  As the Apostle Paul said, we still await the day when “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21).  Death and many other consequences of sin are inevitable and unavoidable.

When we create a law such as the one proposed in Colorado, we are affirming our collective will to so value the independent human status of the fertilized ovum that we are committing ourselves and our collective resources to protecting it and to holding those who have created it accountable for maintaining it.  The Colorado proposal seems to reject the responsibility to make ongoing value judgments and instead attempts to make a once-and-for-all absolute value judgment that will supposedly resolve all those other moral conflicts. 

The proposed Colorado law makes heroic efforts to save every unborn human obligatory.  There is no other way to avoid this conclusion because by definition the law takes effect at the moment of conception, when the number of cells is at the lowest possible level.  Could babies with gross deformities that were not predicted before conception be aborted if they were identified shortly after conception?  Not if they were defined as human persons and therefore protected by the Colorado constitution.  But to their credit if they approve this amendment, Colorado voters will also be committing themselves to the medical and social services to pay for these lifelong dependent citizens.

Think what it would mean if every fertilized egg is considered a human person even though nobody in particular cares about it.  Society would still have an obligation to protect every fertilized egg as long as possible.  In this scenario every unused egg conceived for in vitro fertilization would be required to be preserved forever.  Fertilized embryos can be stored in liquid nitrogen for indefinite periods of time. People who recognize the absurdity of creating this legal responsibility most likely recognize that some specific humans must also value those eggs, or at least should value those eggs if they must be preserved.

However, by all accounts this proposed Colorado law appears to require the absurd conclusion that all fertilized eggs are human persons and therefore must be guaranteed full constitutional rights.  That means any fertilized ovums left over after the in vitro fertilization process would still be considered human beings under the Colorado constitution.

There are other possible complications of this Colorado law including creating conflicts of interest between the rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn fetus:

Treating the fetus as a legal entity separate from the pregnant woman creates the potential for an adversarial relationship between the woman’s health needs and those of her developing fetus and further confuses the issues of the health care provider’s duty to his or her “patient”…. (Smock, et.al., 2003)

Some are also concerned that certain types of IUD birth control devices might become illegal since they may prevent implantation of the fertilized cell in the uterus after conception.  That could be seen as a kind of murder if the fertilized cell is defined as a human person, for as one anti-abortionist put it, “Most methods of birth control kill babies in the womb by preventing implantation.”

It appears that the main immediate goal of the proposed Colorado law is to legally establish high moral ideals; but it also appears that the far-reaching legal consequences of the law have not been well considered or communicated.

The proposed Colorado law will obviously eliminate abortion in Colorado.  But it will also, as we have already seen, most likely create the requirement that all embryos produced by infertile couples during in vitro fertilization will be their responsibility to maintain forever, since these embryos are their offspring and therefore their responsibility.  These embryos will be “people” before the law forever, even though they are contained in freezers. 

Can you imagine the commercial possibilities?  I wonder if anyone has begun locking in patents, copyrights and .com names.  Given that the amendment is presented in an innocuous format completely unrelated to any controversial setting, it has a very good chance of passing simply because those who are not informed on this issue and see the proposal for the first time either on the petition or in the voting booth may not give it much thought and conclude it really does not matter, but must be needed for some good reason.

Considering that this would be a constitutional amendment, and that the future consequences of this law are so likely to be unwelcome and expensive, this proposal really does set a new standard for condensing extremism in a small package.  Hopefully the citizens of Colorado will sincerely and accurately count the cost before they cast their votes on this measure.