Colorado voters will be able to decide if abortion should be made a constitutional “right,” and Amendment 79’s opponents are warning that it has much deeper repercussions than many may imagine.
Scott Shamblin (who is leading the Vote No Amendment 79 effort in Colorado) and Gualberto Garcia Jones (an attorney representing Colorado Right to Life in a lawsuit challenging the state) spoke to Live Action News about the amendment and the problems it could cause.
Dishonest voter guide says amendment will have “no fiscal impact” despite repealing ban on taxpayer-funded abortion
Garcia Jones said the voter guide regarding Amendment 79’s fiscal impact statement was lacking certain required elements, so CO Right to Life decided to mount a legal challenge against the statement’s misleading claims.
“The voter guide is supposed to have a few things,” he said. “It’s constitutionally mandated, basically, by the Colorado Constitution to make sure that people understand the initiatives that are being presented to them. And so it’s part of the work of the legislature to provide this guide that gets shipped out to every single voter in the state of Colorado. And so in our case, the guide describes the amendment, which has two parts.”
One part of the amendment repeals Colorado’s current constitutional amendment prohibiting taxpayer funding for abortion, while the second creates an undefined right to abortion within the constitution, without any limits.
Yet the fiscal impact statement claimed there would be no financial impact when the government begins funding countless abortions.
“We expected the voter guide to… basically try at least to give some estimate of what the cost would be to the voters,” Garcia Jones said. “Instead of doing that, they literally said that the amendment or the measure will have no fiscal impact on the state, on local or state governments. And we disputed that and basically gave the court all sorts of precedent from other states.”
He added, “There are at least six or seven states that we mentioned in our pleading where the courts in these states, after finding a constitutional right to abortion just like the one that’s being proposed, proceeded to then mandate Medicaid funding of abortion. And so while the fiscal impact’s not required to foresee an exact amount, because that’s impossible, they should be able to tell people that the purpose and effect of this amendment, this measure, is to provide for taxpayer funding of abortion.”
Garcia Jones noted, “[I]t doesn’t take a genius to look at this and say, well, currently there are these many abortions and the potential impact could be at least millions of dollars, probably a lot more. And so they didn’t say that. They said it won’t have an impact.”
Furthermore, he added, the impact statement did not include the potential cost of lawsuits against the amendment — a cost which he said was included in pro-life measures.
“I personally wrote two of the previous personhood amendments and campaigned when I lived in Colorado for them,” he said. “And even the amendment that was put on the ballot in 2022, I believe it was, to prohibit just late-term abortions, the legislative council always included a statement saying that the court would have to weigh in and… that would impact the fiscal impact. And so we find that completely biased and unfair.”
Unfortunately, the courts dismissed the lawsuit against the amendment, and Garcia Jones says they plan to appeal that ruling.
“But the court said…we have no legal recourse to prevent the legislative council’s office, which is part of the General Assembly, the legislature, from saying whatever they want on that voter guide,” he said. “And so that’s going to be the basis of our challenge, that this clearly can’t be the constitutional standard, since the Constitution itself specifically requires that the voter guide be fair and impartial… [O]ur argument is that since the Constitution requires that, then the court has to be able to have a recourse to intervene when the Assembly gives a biased and unfair statement.”
Who’s funding Amendment 79?
Interestingly, Scott Shamblin pointed out that the abortion lobby behind the amendment has remained quiet so far, and isn’t yet being active in promoting it.
“We do have, however, some pretty good knowledge of who’s funding this, to an extent, and how much,” Garcia Jones noted. “You can actually find this on Ballotpedia. They have a good layout of the funding, and they have an incredible amount of money, actually. They raised almost $6 million on this, and they really haven’t spent very much of it. It’s kind of a mystery, like Scott says, what they’re planning on doing with it.”
However, they know where a significant portion of the funds are coming from. Garcia Jones said “a big chunk of this money, like $1.2-$1.3 million, comes from this Cobalt Foundation and Cobalt Advocates. That’s kind of like a way for them to donate without actually saying who’s actually giving the funds. It’s a dark money type of operation.” Cobalt was originally part of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado, before splitting off to become an independent organization. Their reasoning was because Cobalt wanted to focus more on abortion than NARAL was.
In addition, Oklahoma billionaire Lynn Schusterman, who has put millions toward promoting abortion initiatives in various states, is also donating to the Colorado pro-abortion amendment efforts.
And yet, right now, the initiative’s existence is largely being kept quiet.
“It’s kind of unprecedented, the amount of money that they’ve raised in Colorado. I don’t think in the past amendments that I wrote and I worked on that they put this much money into it,” said Garcia Jones. “My guess is that really this money is going to voter turnout, and that they’re working with the DNC to make this a get-out-the-vote operation.”
Shamblin added, “Nobody knows that this is on the ballot. It’s the best-kept secret. They’re probably afraid, because as it stands, polling that’s been done, it only passes right now, as-is, at 60%. And they need 55% for it to pass. But if we properly educate the voters, it fails at 47%.”
What’s the goal for the Vote No on 79 campaign?
The current goal for the Vote No on 79 campaign is to reach voters and make them aware.
“Our current strategy is primarily grassroots,” Shamblin explained. “We’re getting to churches. We have volunteers all throughout the state that are going to be going door to door. And that’s been the primary strategy for us so far. We are coordinating with another group who plans on doing more mass marketed ads, like TV and radio ads, that kind of thing. And so for us, it’s primarily grassroots. One of the other groups we’re working with is doing a more targeted campaign to the middle and middle left that are more swayable.”
Shamblin added that, among voters they’ve talked to so far, there has been shock that the amendment even exists… and even more shock over how far it goes.
“They’re all, first off, surprised they had no idea this this was going on,” he said. “And then they’re disgusted. [Lawmakers] already passed the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which is essentially completely unrestricted abortion for any reason at any time. And they took that. And now they’re saying, oh, how much further can we go? And so now they’re trying to get their abortions free.”
Shamblin added, “Then with the more middle of the road, people… I’ve talked to pro-choice people, I’ve talked to Libertarians, and these are the people that say, fine, get an abortion. I don’t care. Just don’t make me pay for it. Keyword there: don’t make me pay for it. They are not happy at all, including Democrats, that this would make them pay for it.”
Despite the grassroots operation against the initiative, the pro-abortion lobby, as usual, has millions more behind promoting the amendment than the pro-life opposition does.
“… There’s such a severe disparity in the funding that they really are not a reflection of popular sentiment,” Garcia Jones said. “People say it’s a losing issue at this point. But I don’t think there’s a single issue where if you… run a $6 million campaign versus a $60,000 campaign, where the $60,000 one is going to win.”
