CRTL 2008 Candidate Questionnaire

Colorado RTL, the largest pro-life organization in the state, has just moved our office across the street from the Capitol. Please consider your responses to the questions below and then mail your answers back to us at 1535 Grant Street, Suite 303, 80203. We will mail voter guides out to registered pro-lifers and post the results of our candidate questionnaires online at ColoradoRightToLife.org. We would like to hear from you before your constituents vote at the Assembly, so they will benefit from our Pro-life Voters' Guide. The time is short, so please respond as soon as possible. We hope you will answer "Yes" to each of the following fundamental moral questions. Thanks!

Candidate Name: _______________________; Party: ______________________

Office Sought: __________________________

1.  Do you advocate that the government uphold the God-given, inalienable Right to Life for the unborn?

2.  Do you agree that abortion is always wrong, even when the baby's father is a criminal (a rapist)? [See life-of-the mother note below.]

3.  Do you support the 2008 Colorado Personhood amendment effort to define "person" to include any human being from the moment of fertilization?

4.  Do you oppose all public funding for Planned Parenthood, the largest and richest organization in the abortion industry?

5.  Will you oppose any attempts to allow doctor-assisted suicide and other forms of euthanasia?

6.  Will you oppose any research or practice that would intentionally destroy the tiniest living humans (embryonic stem cell research)?

7.  Will you refuse to support any legislation that would allow abortion, even if it is a 'pro-life' bill? (i.e. legislation that says "Abortion shall be prohibited unless…")

Colorado RTL opposes every law that regulates the killing of unborn children because, regardless of the intention, such laws:
– violate God's enduring command, Do not murder,
– merely prune the abortion weed and strengthen its root,
– make abortion seem more palatable to the public and politicians,
– turn conservative judges increasingly against the Right to Life of the unborn,
– will keep abortion legal if Roe v. Wade is merely overturned, and because they
– end with the meaning, "and then you can kill the baby."

Colorado RTL is glad to work with you on wording for pro-life legislation, and we have an extensive nationwide network of pro-life organizations, lawyers, and public officials to draw upon. We will, however, oppose legislation and all candidates who would authorize the intentional killing of the innocent. Since we're two doors north on Grant Street from the Capitol, we invite you to call us at 303 753-9394 and arrange to come by and meet our officers to discuss strategy for ending legalized abortion. Feel free also to just stop by and say hello!

Joe Riccobono
President, Colorado RTL

Please Note: When the mother's life is seriously threatened by a pregnancy, of course it is morally justified to deliver the baby but not if the intention is to kill the baby. When the life of the mother is at serious risk by her pregnancy, the goal must be to save the life of the mother and the baby if at all possible. It is just as wrong to kill the mother to save the baby, as it is to kill the baby to save the mother. "Legalizing" abortion, defined as the intentional killing of the unborn child, for the life of the mother leads to repugnant acts like emergency removal of late-term babies from the womb stopping midway in the procedure to kill the baby. If the baby dies, it is a tragedy; if the baby is intentionally killed, it is murder. If necessary to save the mom's life, the unborn baby could be delivered with the determination to care for both, and if possible, to save both the baby and mother!

Colorado RTL Report for Candidates:
U.S. Judicial Crisis

Colorado RTL is informing pro-lifers, politicians and candidates of a crisis among the federal judiciary. For 35 years, pro-lifers have hoped that by electing pro-life presidents such as Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George W. Bush, America would get judges who support the God-given right to life of the unborn. Justices, who we all hoped were pro-life, have made it increasingly clear that they are not.

Antonin Scalia has publicly stated that he would strike down any law that prohibited abortion in all fifty states, and Clarence Thomas has ruled that the public has the right to decide to legalize the killing of unborn children. Sadly, not even one of the seven current U.S. Supreme Court Justices nominated by Republican presidents support the right to life of the unborn.

Further, our pro-life presidents have nominated sixty percent of the U.S. federal judiciary, and yet the judiciary utterly rejects the right to life of the unborn. Also we should remember that the pro-abortion Roe v. Wade decision was written by a Republican Justice and passed by the Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, and abortion was legalized in Colorado by Republican governor John Love in 1967.

Colorado RTL is educating pro-life politicians and candidates to the sobering judicial crisis because it tells us that the status quo strategy of regulating abortion over the last decades is leading to a judicial culture exactly the opposite of what the pro-life movement had expected. When we ask judges to uphold abortion regulations, that very request moves "our own" judges to accept that the government has the right to regulate the killing of children, which they do by upholding the pro-life movement's own initiatives.

Thus Colorado RTL advocates enforcement of the God-given right to life and promotes the Personhood strategy to end legalized abortion in America!