In Colorado, the deadline for submitting ballot measures to be voted upon in the November elections has come and gone. One of those measures was labeled Initiative 56, and it would have brought about many changes relating to abortions, including banning the procedure in all but a handful of cases. It also would have imposed stiff criminal penalties, including incarceration, for anyone convicted of being involved in a banned abortion or the murder of any child. But the organizers of the proposal informed the state Elections Division yesterday that they would not be submitting signatures to place Initiative 56 on the ballot. They will be able to try again in two years if they choose to do so. (Colorado Politics)

The proposed ballot measure seeking to ban abortion in Colorado will not appear on the November ballot, the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office told Colorado Politics.

According to the Elections Division, backers of Initiative #56 informed the office Monday they would not be submitting petition signatures ahead of the 5 p.m. deadline.

The ballot measure sought to define “murder of a child” and ban abortion, save in a few narrow cases. Both anti-abortion advocates and abortion rights activists noted the measure offered no legal carve out for women who get an abortion.

The organizers of the initiative didn’t provide specific numbers regarding the signatures they collected, but they told a reporter for the linked article that it was “not enough to get on the ballot.”

It’s impossible to read the minds of all of the people who signed or refused to sign the petitions, obviously. But looking at the details of Initiative 56, it certainly seems possible that the sponsors tried to reach much further than a lot of the public would be willing to go. There clearly may be support in Colorado for some restrictions on abortions, but this measure would have been among the strictest abortion laws in the entire nation.

For starters, it would have prohibited “the intentional murder of a child prior to, during, or after birth – and up to age 18.” That seems like an odd approach because I’m quite confident that it’s already illegal to murder born children of any age in Colorado and the penalties for doing so are quite severe. But it’s the “prior to or during” birth that may have put some residents off.

Not only the person performing the procedure but the mother and anyone else tangentially involved in the abortion could be charged with murder. There were no exceptions except for saving the life of the mother. Even the Denver Catholic Archdioceses declined to support Initiative 56, saying that such a law “would put everybody involved in prison for murder, including the woman.”

Colorado’s pool of voters no doubt includes a pro-life coalition and it may be sizable. If this proposal had been a bit more limited, perhaps including a ban on third-trimester abortions with exceptions for rape and incest as well as the life of the mother, I would not be shocked if it had sailed through with flying colors. But Initiative 56 appears to have been a bridge too far for many residents. If you can’t even attract the bare minimum of signatures to get on the ballot, your prospects when the voters actually show up are not likely to be great.