Colorado Springs Gazette: Barbaric new bill allows postnatal 'abortion' rights

Colorado fancies itself a public policy maverick. So, maybe we should kill newborns. That's what overreaching Democrats in the legislature propose.

Our state was the first to legalize abortion. Pot. Hallucinogens in Denver. We allow fentanyl in quantities sufficient to kill thousands without fear of prison. We're America's new death-metal shock-jock with a skull-and-bones tattoo.

In the latest attack on culture and law, 59 Democrats — with no Republican sponsors — may legalize the killing of newborns. The right to kill birthed children is cleverly hidden in House Bill 22-1279, titled the “Reproductive Health Equity Act.” The Colorado House Health and Insurance Committee will consider it Wednesday.

Most Coloradans support abortion rights. They accept late abortions, such as those conducted up to labor and delivery at the Boulder Abortion Clinic.

HB 1279 takes this another step. It would forbid cities, counties, towns and the state government from interfering with a woman’s right to an abortion. That’s no surprise. Sponsors introduced it because the US Supreme Court might overturn Roe v. Wade — the law preventing most state regulation of abortion — when it rules this year on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

If the court overturns Roe, it won't affect Colorado. As HB 1279 explains, Colorado was first "to decriminalize abortion care... well before” Roe v. Wade.

Colorado is only more "pro-choice" 55 years later. The sun will burn out before this state restricts abortion.

Using abortion as a ruse, the bill proposes lawful infanticide without stating it. It forbids any jurisdiction from infringing an “individual’s right to act” regarding “the pregnancy’s outcomes.” A “pregnancy’s outcomes" often include the birth of a person.

The bill defines “Reproductive Health Care” — which can have no possible limitations — to include "postnatal and delivery care.”

“Postnatal” means after childbirth. Forbidding any regulation of “postnatal” care means an infant born before or during an abortion or during a botched procedure can be left to die or euthanized after a physician’s consultation.

Only barbarians would view a newborn as disposable. Section 1(b) says we especially need this bill for “people of color and people with low incomes.” Translation: the wealthy can afford their newborns; those who can't afford them — expressly people of color — should have the choice to let them die without consequence.

"In all my years in the legislature and since, this is the most barbaric bill I have seen — ever," said former Republican Colorado House Majority Leader Amy Stephens, explaining how the bill would allow the killing of newborns.

Though it fits Colorado’s break-the-mold image, this is not new. Former Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist known for black face and a racist college yearbook page, spoke in defense of euthanizing or medically neglecting unwanted infants.

“The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother,” Northam said on the radio in 2019, explaining the option of killing unwanted, fully birthed children.

Colorado statehouse Democrats killed a bill in 2016 written to ensure health care for postnatal infants. Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet voted against a congressional bill in 2019 to require health care for newborns. Former Gov. John Hickenlooper, during his successful 2019 senatorial campaign, walked off the radio show of Denver attorney Dan Caplis when asked if newborns deserve life-saving care.

Regardless of any ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, all abortions — even during labor — will remain legal in Colorado. Don't let legislators indulge more left-wing fanaticism by legalizing the infanticides of unwanted newborns — most notably, as their bill declares, for those “people of color.”

Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board