Last week, The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels posted an email from Rep. Ken Summers, in which he explained why he thought he lost his State Senate race against Democrat Andy Kerr.

Summers wrote Bartels that his opponents lied about him and distorted his views. He wrote, for example:

I have never been supportive of the personhood amendment, but that was the basis for saying Ken Summers is against contraception.

This sentence caught my attention because it directly contradicted Summers’ response to a 2008 Rocky Mountain News candidate questionnaire, which you can see with your own eyes here: Ken Summers’ 2008 Rocky Mountain News candidate questionnaire

In it, Summers, a Republican and former pastor, answers plainly:

Do you support Amendment 48? It would ban abortion by defining personhood as beginning at fertilization.

Summers: Yes

In the candidate’s words: A new baseline for this issue is needed. Clarifications will be needed.

In her blog post, Bartels didn’t correct Summers’ statement. Nor did she do so after a commenter spotlighted the factual error. Clearly, she should have set Summers straight for the record, because these details matter.

And of course, more could be written about Summers and personhood, even though the election seems like ages ago already, and Summers lost.

People might want to know why Summers apparently has no recollection of supporting personhood, and whether he understood that it would, in fact, ban many forms of birth control, in addition to all abortion, even in the case of rape and incest.

Would Summers, who I’ve found to be relatively reasonable, be less angry at the “nasty” mailers of his opponents, and more upset with his own self, if he were reminded of his 2008 endorsement of personhood? Perhaps he thought his extreme position on abortion was private, that he’d not gone public with it, and he simply forgot about the Rocky questionnaire.

Who knows?

But from a journalistic perspective, it proves the point that’s been proven over and over again, that nasty things usually look a lot less nasty when you report both sides and put the facts on the table.

In a “Truth Test” check of a Perlmutter ad, 9News Brandon Rittiman concluded Thursday that it’s “arguable” whether Joe Coors opposes abortion, even in the case of rape and incest,” as Permutter’s ad asserts.

Even if you’re not a sponge for personhood trivia, like I am, you may know that Coors supported the personhood amendment in 2010, which would ban all abortions, including for rape and incest. He even donated $1,000 to the cause just two years ago.

Then, in August, he told The Denver Post that he would not support personhood again this year because the voters had already rejected it twice.

But Coors did not say that he withdrew his support for it permanently, or even that he disagreed with it.

So, given Coors support for personhood, how could 9News possibly find it “arguable” that Coors actually supports abortion in the case of rape and incest?

Well, because that’s what his campaign told 9News last month! Thursday’s Truth Test cites this 9News  interview with Coors, which was included in a September Truth Test:

…the Coors campaign says that Joe Coors would seek to ban abortion, but would allow exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is at risk.

A spokesperson for Coors says he would encourage women who are pregnant from instances of rape or incest not to terminate their pregnancies. But he does not believe the law should “criminalize” abortion in such traumatic circumstances.

The Coors Campaign also told 9News in September that Coors “does not want to make any kind of birth control illegal.” (Hello. It’s widely agreed that the personhood amendment would ban some forms of birth control.)

On Thursday, 9News went further, reporting that now “Coors states he would not support Personhood efforts.” This may be based on 9News’ report in September that “Joe Coors is still pro-life, and feels he can be pro-life, even without backing personhood efforts.”

It’s unclear whether 9News is referring to not backing this year’s efforts, which has been Coors’ position previously, or whether Coors has, like Ken Buck and Paul Ryan before him, and done a big old flip flop.

So what do you do with this, if you’re a journalist at 9News or anywhere else?

It’s time for a direct intervention with the candidate.

How did he come around to endorsing (and donating to) the personhood amendment in the first place? Even if he’s not supporting the personhood amendment this time, why has his abortion position, as reflected in his previous support for the amendment, changed? Did he understand what the personhood amendment would do, when he endorsed and donated $1,000?  (You’d think he’d have known what exactly he was donating to, since $1,000 is not a penny-ante money, unless you’re Scott Gessler)

Why is Coors no longer anti-abortion, with no exceptions? Did he go through some kind of life transition? Why did his thinking change? In other words, how could this happen?

We need to hear from Coors on this.

In his speech to yesterday’s “Values Voter Summit,” organized by the conservative Family Research Council, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan continued his pattern of delivering outright falsehoods in his speechifying.

At one point, Ryan said:

“Now, apparently, the Obama-Biden ticket stands for an absolute, unqualified right to abortion — at any time, under any circumstance and even at taxpayer expense.”

It’s obvious that reporters should set the record straight here, but Associated Press chose not to, reporting Ryan’s comments this way:

[Ryan] also delivered a blistering critique of President Barack Obama’s position on abortion, saying the president stands for an “absolute, unqualified right to abortion.”

In its report, National Public Radio reported Ryan’s full comment about abortion, and corrected it:

That is not the president’s position on abortion rights. The Obama campaign responded that Ryan’s speech contained “over-the-top, dishonest attacks.”

Obama clearly supports a women’s right to choose, with restrictions, as codified under Roe vs. Wade.

To say that Obama supports abortion “under any circumstance and even at taxpayer expense” is so far from the truth, so completely disconnected to the facts, that you wonder why more national reporters didn’t call Ryan out on it, especially given that women are a focus of both campaigns.

Update: In my haste to leave my office on Friday afternoon, I didn’t give 9News’ Brandon Rittiman sufficient time to respond to some points I raised after he responded to my intial questions. I pomised to include any additional thoughts from him, if he had any, and I should have waited longer to receive them. So, I’m including more thoughts from Rittiman here:

I’d add that I’m not taking a side on the issue itself.

It’s not my place to tell people what to think of the idea. It’s pretty clear where the electorate stands, regardless.

This a matter of what the supporters say their initiative would do (which we can prove) versus what it will actually do (which we don’t know for certain.)

If I could go back in time to August 7, I’d have added attribution to what I said on camera: “The sponsors say it would ban abortions in cases of rape or incest.”

I take your point about other ballot questions needing to survive court tests, however, with this initiative, I think it goes beyond merely surviving a court challenge.

The language itself requires court interpretation. It’s incomplete, which is why we have so much room for interpretation of its various effects.

It doesn’t spell out any method for enforcement of its provisions or penalties for violating its provisions.

I’m no lawyer, but I suspect that this vagueness of wording is intentional to force the courts to codify some form of law more restrictive of abortion, to the maximum amount possible.

All we can say would happen for certain is that if this passed the courts would have to decide what to do with it.

Since state law doesn’t trump an existing SCOTUS decision, I don’t know that we can say with certainty that this initiative “would” ban abortions in all cases, even if that’s the intent of its sponsors.

I think the Truth Test piece accurately represents that idea.

————————–

Many journalists in Denver and beyond (e.g, Washington Post, Denver Post, 7News) write, as a factual matter, that the 2012 personhood amendment would have banned all abortions.

Among them is 9News’ Political Reporter Brandon Rittiman, who reported Aug. 7 that personhood “would ban abortions, including in cases of rape and incest.” (Watch the video to see the quote, as it’s not included in the text version.)

So on Wednesday, I was surprised to see Rittiman, in a Truth Test of an anti-Joe-Coors-Jr. ad, call the following statement “debatable:”

“The ‘personhood’ initiative backed by [Joe] Coors would have banned abortion even in cases of rape and incest.”

Via email, I asked Rittiman about the apparent contradiction between his two stories, and he responded as follows:

The short answer is because the wording of the ballot question has changed over time.

The long answer gets into a lot of layers of this story, but here goes:

This year, the supporters of “personhood” decided to use stronger language and publicly stated that the goal was to ban abortions with no exceptions.

In the version that Joe Coors supported in 2010, the supporters did not make that claim, though opponents argued that it could have the effect of banning abortions without exception for cases of rape and incest.

The struggle here is that the proposed personhood amendments are worded in such a way as to practically guarantee the need for court interpretation of the extent and effect of the law.

This story would be a lot easier for all to understand if it were a clearly worded ban on abortion that contained language specific to the exceptions.

Otherwise we are all just trying to determine the effect of a law that has not been vetted by the third branch yet. That is what I had hoped to communicate in the Truth Test.

Rittiman is right that, in this year’s version of personhood, there’s an explicit statement prohibiting exceptions for rape and incest. And there was none in 2010.

Still, both give legal rights to a “person” at early stages of development.

In 2010, personhood gave general legal rights, including “equality of justice, and due process of law, to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.” The Bluebook, interpreted this as meaning, in part: “If a person’s legal rights are violated, this section guarantees that a judicial remedy is available.”

How could the state of Colorado protect one “person” (conceived under happy circumstances), while another “person” (conceived after rape) would not be protected?

Rittiman might say, that’s debatable, and, look, here we are debating it! Fair enough.

But I’d say that, even though you can debate the point, it’s most fair, when you look at the personhood text and interpretations, to say that all abortions would be banned under personhood, even abortions for rape and incest.

The fact, pointed out by Rittiman in his online piece, that Coors, Jr, says he believes in exceptions for rape and incest, does not make the ad’s statement any more “debatable,” given that Coors indeed supported personhood previously.

Neither does this information, which Rittiman included in his Sept. 5 piece:

A spokesperson for Coors says he would encourage women who are pregnant from instances of rape or incest not to terminate their pregnancies. But he does not believe the law should “criminalize” abortion in such traumatic circumstances.

As to Rittiman’s other point, that there would be a court case if personhood had passed, any initiative faces likely court challenges.

Regardless, journalists still have to talk about what it would do, without always adding that it might get tossed by the courts.

In any case, it’s hard to argue that the “rape-and-incest” line in the 2012 version personhood makes it more court-proof than the 2010 version. They both are equally vulnerable.

But for the purposes of fact checking, it’s fair for a political ad to assert that the personhood initiative, if passed, would have banned abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest, even if the courts might have nixed it

You might think it would take a miracle to find a serious presidential ticket that supports personhood laws, which would ban some forms of birth control, as well as all abortion, even after rape or incest.

That doesn’t sound like a super popular position for a presidential candidate to have, now that we are exactly 62 years beyond the year 1950.

But, it turns out, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are both apparently for personhood.

Paul Ryan obviously supports it, since he co-sponsored federal personhood legislation just last year. His bill grants “all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges” to fertilized eggs (or “zygotes”). It also grants authority to the states to pass personhood.

Romney is also apparently a supporter of personhood, but he has said he’s against a federal personhood law, like the one Ryan co-sponsored.

Instead, Romney favors personhood efforts at the state level. Presumably this would include Colorado’s personhood initiative, but he hasn’t been asked about it.

Romney has flipped around a bit on the issue, but as recently as October, Romney told Fox News’ Mike Huckabee that he “absolutely” would have signed an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution codifying his belief that life begins when a sperm enters egg.

Later, Romney’s spokespeople reinforced this, telling Politico’s Ben Smith that Romney supports “efforts to ensure recognition that life begins at conception” and that “these matters should be left up to states to decide.”

Ryan would almost undoubtedly support efforts to enact personhood at the state level, given his history on the issue, and given that the federal legislation he co-sponsored paves the way for it.

So how will Romney and Ryan work out their differences on personhood?

Will Romney bend a little bit and accept the federal approach to personhood, as well as the state path?

Or will Ryan adopt Romney’s position, give up his efforts to pass personhood at the federal level, and focus on the states, like Colorado?

That’s something reporters should seek clarification on, as the campaign moves forward.

(Note: For a more detailed explanation of state versus federal personhood, please read this previous blog post of mine. For a list of other co-sponsors of federal personhood bills, click here.)

The Denver Post today ran an Associated Press story today describing Romney running mate Paul Ryan’s position on “abortion” this way:

The Catholic congressman is staunchly against abortion rights and backed by several anti-abortion groups. He co-sponsored the Sanctity of Human Life Act and the Right to Life Act, which both say life begins at the moment of fertilization. Despite his voting record, he’s given little indication, especailly in recent years, that he want to go to the ramparts on the issue.

Many people don’t understand the ramifications of passing a bill saying that life begins at the “moment of fertilization.”

It’s fair enough for a reporter to write that Ryan wants to protect “life” at this early stage. But to adequately inform people about this complex issue, reporters should add that giving legal rights to fertilized eggs (zygotes), would, among other things, include a ban on abortion, even in the case of rape and incest. It would also mean a ban on common forms of birth control.

Colorado has a lot of experience with politicians endorsing personhood, then trying to slide away from it when the eyes of everyday people turn toward them.

It’s time for reporters to draw on this experience in questioning Rep. Paul Ryan, when the opportunity presents itself.

Will Ryan, who supported personhood legislation in Congress, stand by his position?

It won’t work for Ryan to say, like Rep. Mike Coffman and Rep. Cory Gardner did last week, that it’s a just measly state issue that’s not relevant to him as federal candidate , because Ryan endorsed it at the federal level.

(Actually, that excuse doesn’t work for Coffman and Gardner, since they supported it when they ran for federal office previously, according to Colorado Right to Life.)

It won’t work for Ryan to say, like congressional candidate Joe Coors did last week, that the voters have twice voted the ballot measure down, and so Ryan is going to respect their decision, because Ryan was pushing federal legislation on the issue despite voter hostility and long odds against him.

(Actually, that logic doesn’t excuse Coors from telling voters why he supported personhood?)

Will it work Ryan to un-endorse personhood, like Colorado Senate Ken Buck did in 2010, because he doesn’t understand that personhood would ban common forms of birth control.

I mean, Ryan was a co-sponsor of the personhood bill!

Can you imagine a guy like Ryan offering the excuse that he’s a budget maven not a birth-control maven?

Or will Ryan follow the lead of Rep. Doug Lamborn, who’s separated himself from his GOP personhood allies in Colorado by saying through a spokesperson that he’s still a “supporter” of personhood.

You might guess that Ryan’s model would be Lamborn, since Lamborn co-sponsored the same federal personhood “Sanctity of Human Life” bill that Ryan did.

In any case, at some point, whether it’s tomorrow, if Ryan takes questions from reporters, or at some future debate or press conference, some reporter has to ask Ryan, “You’re a co-sponsor of a bill making personhood federal law.”

“Why are you so strongly against choice, that you want to ban common forms of birth control, as personhood laws would do?

Why do you feel so strongly about abortion, that you want to ban it, even for a girl who’s raped by her father?”

<b>Update:</b> In an article published today, the Colorado Statesman’s Peter Marcus reports that this year’s personhood  initiative has been clarified to state that only  “methods of birth control and assisted reproduction that kill a fetus” could be affected. This still means that the forms of birth control, like IUDs and some forms of the Pill, that could kill a fetus would be banned. So, despite the clarification, nothing has changed birth-control wise about personhood since 2010.

________________

If you know the name “Ken Buck” you undoubtedly know that the personhood amendment would, among other things, ban common forms of birth control.

Buck claimed not to know this when he endorsed personhood, so he un-endorsed it during the 2010 campaign. As the Denver Post reported at the time:

Buck said Saturday through his campaign spokesman that he will now vote against the [personhood] measure. In an earlier interview, he said he did not understand until recently that passage of the amendment would likely outlaw some common contraceptive methods, like the IUD or birth control pills that can reduce the chances of implantation for a fertilized egg.

“This isn’t how I looked at the personhood amendment,” Buck said. “I’m not in favor of banning common forms of birth control.”

Ever since, it’s been an established fact that a personhood law would ban common forms of birth control.

Yet, in this week’s coverage of personhood, only The Denver Post and the Durango Herald reported the critical fact that the personhood measure would ban common forms of birth control.

The Denver Post’s Electa Daper wrote Aug. 9 that “some forms of birth control” would “effectively” be banned under personhood. The Post story stated:

On Monday sponsors of the ballot initiative, which would amend the state constitution to effectively ban all abortions and some forms of birth control, turned in petitions with 112,121signatures to Colorado’s secretary of state. [BigMedia emphasis]

The Durango Herald reporter Joe Hanel described personhood this way in an Aug. 8 about state ballot initiatives:

This year is the third time around for the Personhood initiative, which seeks an amendment to the state constitution to declare that embryos from the moment of conception have the same legal rights as any person. The amendment could lead to bans on abortion, common forms of birth control and fertility treatments. [BigMedia emphasis]

Unfortunately, other coverage of personhood, including stories on 9News, CBS4, didn’t mention birth control at all.

That’s a big omission, because, among personhood’s many and varied impacts, outlawing some common forms of birth control could be its most significant, at least from your everyday person’s perspective (O\r every week’s person’s perspective or twice weekly person’s perspective, depending on who you are).

I’m not saying other basic facts about the amendment, that it would ban abortion and define life as beginning at the zygote (fertilized egg) stage, are of lesser importance. They’re also basic descriptors that should be worked into all personhood coverage.

But to be fair, reporting on the personhood amendment should at least include all three facts. It would 1) ban on abortion, 2) ban on common forms of birth control, 3) define life as beginning at conception.

There proposed amendment would do much more than that, of course, like ban abortion in the case of rape and incest. And the ramifications of giving legal rights to zygotes are mind-bogling.

And these many and varied components of personhood should be explored with current endorsers and opponents alike, as well as previous supporters, like candidates Joe Coors and Mike Coffman.

But ongoing reporting of the measure shouldn’t leave out the birth-control aspect.

Obviously, the key news from today’s personhood press conference was that personhood supporters turned in 112,121 signatures to Colorado’s Secretary of State, hoping to get their measure on the November ballot.

But the political ramifications of the personhood amendment should continue to be a key part of the coverage. The amendment, which would ban all abortions and some common forms of birth control, is clearly of interest to women, in particular, and women are a key voters in Colorado elections.

Personhood supporters have yet to hear from Rep. Mike Coffman and Rep. Cory Gardner about whether they will endorse their amendment this year, as they did in 2010, Personhood USA legal analyst Gualberto Garcia Jones told reporters today.

Garcia Jones said they’d welcome their support again, as they would any candidate, Democrat or Republican.

“To me, they’d be shooting themseves in the foot, if they backtracked,” said Colorado Right to Life Vice President Leslie Hanks. “It would be their loss.”

Coffman was listed as a personhood supporter in 2010. Coffman also supported Personhood in 2008, and, on one occasion, Coffman wrote Dan Caplis, of KHOW’s defunct Caplis and Silverman Show, a letter, specifically clarifying that Coffman, like all personhood supporters, does not support abortion, even in the case of rape and incest.

Likewise, Cory Gardner is praised on the Colorado Right to Life website for his support of personhood in 2010, and earlier this year, Kristi Brown, who initiated the personhood movement in Colorado, said that Rep. Cory Gardner was “one of our main supporters” in 2008.

“Kids are taught that life is cheap,” Hanks told me, referring to legalized abortion. “So we shouldn’t be shocked when we have massacres happening.”

She said collecting signatures is intended to counter this and is a “labor of love.”

“Coloradans trust and respect women,” said Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains Director Vicki Cowart in a news release. “‘Personhood’ measures do not respect women and their families. Today, Planned Parenthood gears up for a third campaign. We’re hopeful that the third verse will be the same as the first and second.”

Personhood USA spokesman Keith Mason talks to reporters at a news conference Monday

UPDATE (8-6-2012): After reading my blog post, McBurney sent me the following clarifications:

The only comment I remember differently is this: I operate under no delusion that Personhood will pass “this election cycle in Colorado”. Because I believe it will pass, somewhere, sometime, but I’m a realist, and gaining 21 points in Colorado, in one cycle is highly unlikely.

And another thing I may not have mentioned. The battle for Personhood is about provoking a confrontation. And whether you heathens want to settle this or not, we are going to settle it, and it will be settled in favor of the innocents you have actively advocated murdering. And you will be put to shame.

———-

“The one thing the homosexuals have on us is they will stand up loudly and proclaim what they want,” Doug McBurney told me. “Christians are really timid. They don’t stand up for their beliefs.”

Timid isn’t what you think of when you listen to McBurney’s Weekly World internet podcast or hear his stories, which deserve a wider audience, about collecting signatures to put the personhood amendment, outlawing all abortions and some common forms of birth control, on the November election ballot in Colorado.

To get signatures, McBurney says he’s been “stopping by” churches, sometimes by invitation and sometimes “commando-style,” over the objections of church leaders. Once, he says, he was “literally grabbed” by a Catholic priest.

McBurney says he’d gladly get arrested repeatedly at churches, but family and work commitments make this impossible.

Recently, some members of a church, whose name McBurney will not divulge, told McBurney to ask their pastor to allow McBurney’s personhood-signature gatherers to visit their church and collect signatures. This is McBurney’s story of how he succeeded in getting signatures there.

I could not confirm whether McBurney’s story is true, and in normal circumstances I wouldn’t re-tell it without confirming it. However, whether it’s true or not, or partially true, it’s what McBurney is alleging, and it’s being passed around in personhood circles, as inspiration for their cause. So, as such, and because the harm done if it’s false is minimal, I think it’s worth telling. So here you go,

McBurney says he asked the pastor for permission to solicit signatures on church grounds, but he never heard back.

So he bought a ticket to a “comedy-night” concert at the church, and at the event, he started collecting signatures for the personhood amendment in the lobby.

At which point, he was escorted out of the church by security officers, as were fellow signature gatherers who were in the parking lot, where, McBurney says, they created more of a ruckus.

This kind of altercation doesn’t bother McBurney. In fact, that’s why he’s collecting personhood signatures.

“This is a ministry to increase social tension, and most of all, we want to create social tension in the church, because it has failed us,” he told me.

McBurney doesn’t have “delusional” hopes that the personhood measure will pass, if it makes it on the ballot, he said.

It’s more about what happened at the church after he was escorted out by security.

A few days later, the pastor called McBurney and said he was on his side and believed in his personhood cause, but McBurney’s behavior at the church was unacceptable.

McBurney pleaded with the pastor to rise above the fracas and invite his group back, to collect signatures.

The pastor agreed, and set up a table for McBurney “in the corner” of the church lobby, where, McBurney says, “people could only see us out of the corner of their eyes.”

“So I don’t stand by the table off to the side,” says McBurney. “I took my two-foot-by-two-foot sign, [which read, ‘Protect Innocent Life. Sign the Pro-Life Petition’,] and stood in the middle of lobby.”

“What this pastor saw was that most everyone in his congregation, maybe 150 people, came and signed our petition,” said McBurney.

“This pastor was timid,” McBurney continues. “But I could see in his eyes that he was becoming emboldened. He realized he could say he was pro-life in front of his congregation.”

“The pastor didn’t want chaos in the lobby,” he told me. “He feared that there would be arguments. But the people who supported personhood were happy and joyful about it, and the others just averted their eyes and shuffled out quietly. They were ashamed.”

So McBurney says that, next time, the pastor put them in the center of the lobby, announced that they were out there, and, at the last service, made an “impassioned statement” about them.

“We were flooded,” McBurney told me, and the pastor assigned a staff member to help them collect signatures.

They have a lot of collecting to do to get the approximately 86,000 signatures required by Aug. 6, and McBurney doesn’t know if they can do it.

“We don’t have enough signatures now, and we only have about ten days left,” McBurney said.

But Gualberto Garcia-Jones, legal analyst for Personhood USA, is more optimistic.

“I do think we’ll make it,” he emailed me.