With today’s release of new census figures putting the focus back on the must-win states necessary to defeat Obama in 2012, it’s important for social conservatives to understand something necessary to achieve that goal.

 

In order to defeat Obama and ultimately stop abortions, personhood amendments must be put aside in 2012 so the pro-life community can focus on the number one goal:  installing a pro-life president who will put the nation in a position to legally protect unborn children.

 

Whether your position on abortion is to have a personhood amendment, an abortion ban, allowing the states to make their own laws on abortions or to at least overturn what even some “pro-choice” and liberal scholars agree is one of the worst cases of jurisprudence in Supreme Court history, the courts must be changed. To do that, we must defeat Barack Obama in 2012 and elect to the Senate candidates who will vote to confirm justices who abide by the rule of law rather than making it up from the bench.

 

Here in Colorado, voters defeated a personhood amendment for a second time on a lopsided margin.

 

The 2010 election was a landslide for the pro-life movement and conservatives in general, but the Colorado personhood amendment lost by a 71-29 percent margin. That’s just a 2.7 percent improvement from the very low figure of 27 percent who supported it in 2008. The 2010 elections saw a 7 percent national Republican shift from 2008, but the amendment only gained 2.7 percent. While the political environment for passing the amendment will likely never be better, it came nowhere close to passing.

 

The second defeat of the amendment came also came at a price for the pro-life movement and for conservatives and Republicans in general.

 

The time, money and effort spent on an the amendment could have been put towards pro-life candidates Tom Tancredo and Ken Buck, who lost by narrow margins. Instead, we have a governor and senator who will continue to force us to fund Planned Parenthood and abortion with taxpayer dollars. Democrats continue to control the statehouse and retained their control of the U.S. Senate in part due to Michael Bennet’s victory.

 

Although some backers of the amendment claim it enhanced pro-life turnout and assisted Republican candidates, the opposite is true. Buck and Tancredo lost and, in 2008, Bob Schaffer lost his race for the Senate despite the amendment having ballot status both times.

 

In fact, apart from his own comments that become television commercial fodder, Ken Buck lost his Senate race primarily because Democrats used he endorsement of the amendment against him and relentlessly attacked him for supposedly opposing birth control and contraception. When Buck rescinded his endorsement to stop the onslaught of television attacks, some amendment backers misled voters into thinking Buck wasn’t pro-life.

 

The pro-life movement needs to learn from these defeats and refocus its efforts on the only solution to ending abortion — replacing Obama with a pro-life president and changing control of the Senate so jurists who respect the rule of law will receive fair hearings and a majority vote and can move the Supreme Court in the direction of toppling the case that has resulted in 53 million abortions.

 

Without putting amendments aside and putting the focus on the 2012 elections, abortion on demand could remain in place for another 37 years.

 

If Colorado and other battleground states where amendment may be run (Nevada, Montana, Missouri, etc.) back Obama in 2012 and he becomes president for another four years, he could appoint the Supreme Court judges who will keep unlimited abortions in place for decades.

 

Therefore, we can’t afford to spend considerable time and money on an amendment that is losing at the polls and won’t be upheld in the current pro-abortion Supreme Court anyway. A third campaign for a personhood amendment in 2012 in Colorado will dilute the resources of the pro-life movement and conservatives that need to be focused on defeating Obama. With Obama on the ballot to turn out pro-abortion voters, the Colorado amendment — and amendments in majority Democratic or other presidential election battleground states — won’t win a majority anyway.

 

We need a united pro-life movement in Colorado and nationwide focusing all of its energy and attention on the 2012 elections — only then can we truly protect unborn children.