According to the Denver Post, The group Colorado for Equal Rights submitted 131,245 signatures to place an initiative on the November statewide ballot that would define a fertilized embryo as a person and extend to it rights and protections under the Colorado Constitution. It's unclear how many of those signatures were from fertilized eggs. The Secretary of State's office will validate that at least 76,000 of them were from those considered people by today's standards of law.

The ballot initiative seeks to move the definition of life to an unknowable biological moment, when sperm fertilizes egg, for which there is no test to determine. By doing so, the state of Colorado would give rights to something the existence of which is unverifiable and set in law that life begins even before pregnancy does. The ramifications of such an act is not fully known but legal analysts propose that it could certainly outlaw the most commonly used forms of contraception, including the birth control pill, and complicate already complicated matters such as inheritance rights and use of HOV lanes.

Mississippi and Montana have similar petition drives underway.

On this ‘National Day to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy,’ I thought it would be a fun exercise to compare the sexual activity of teenagers and their pregnancy rates in the most pro-choice states with those of the most pro-life states. I used NARAL's rankings to determine which were the best and worst states on choice. (Simply, those that scored "F" are the worst and those with an "A" are the best). I then filled in the state data for each from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, the National Day sponsors, and compared the pro-choice states with the pro-life states.

Which side is actually doing a better job?

Conclusion: one side has a lot more to celebrate. Turns out pro-life states, those that are prone to tell kids that abstinence is the only proven contraception, and discourage use of actual contraception, then wag their finger at the less "morally superior" states, are where high schoolers are:

· more sexually active

· more likely to have had sex before the age of 13

· more likely to have four or more sexual partners.

Turns out that to be "pro-life" is to be pro-your-young-teen-having-a-risky-sex-life. In addition, the states that are witnessing the most dramatic drop in teen pregnancies are the most solidly pro-choice ones (CA, VT, HI, AK) while the ones where teen pregnancy rates are declining most slowly are anti-choice (NE, MS, WY, OK).

As this election goes from a simmer to a boil, the culture warriors will be dosing ideological gasoline on the flames. Isn't it time to call the religious right's bluff? If we measured their agenda based on its results they could only be considered the pro-risky-adolescent-sex-unwanted-pregnancy-teen-mothers-and-more-abortion crowd. They have no right to moralize and no standing to be sanctimonious--that should be our job. They're wrong. We know it and it’s time the American public did too. Pro-choice people, and most candidates, have got to use the gifts of evidence we've been given (and earned). The American public doesn't want its 12-year-olds sexually active or their daughters impregnated by one of their four or more sexual partners—but that's what the pro-life agenda is poised to make America's reality, and sadly has for too many already. And there's quantitative data to prove it. One thing is for sure, they're not going to be the ones to mention it. Now wonder they're lying low today.

Tired of the same-old lame protests outside of abortion clinics? Looking to impose your religious beliefs in other people's lives in a new and exciting way? The pro-life movement would like to expand your horizons. On June 7th, the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that gave married people the right to use contraception, the American Life League, along with Pro-Life Wisconsin and Pharmacists for Life International Associate groups want you to join them in protesting in front of facilities that distribute birth control products. The national day against contraception, Protest the Pill Day ’08: The Pill Kills Babies, was started to convince the American people of a simple and imaginative idea: attempting to prevent abortion is abortion too. These arguments have been confounded by diabolical scientists and experts who insistently point out there's no evidence to support that the birth control pill works the way these groups claim. As we all know, however, if ideology waited for science to prove scientific points, our ancestors would have never have spent all those years wandering the then-flat earth.

The campaign website is chock full of important information and you don't want to miss the informative "

Talking Points

"section. Here's a sampling:

Q: The Supreme Court has ruled that it’s my right to privacy — who do you think you are to say otherwise?
A: On June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Griswold v. Connecticut decision. The Supreme Court justices first presumed that previous Court decisions dealing with a citizen’s right to liberty and security that prohibited invasion of one’s home and acquisition of evidence that might later be used to convict him of a crime also addressed privacy within marriage. In fact, the justices argued, “The concept of liberty is not so restricted… it embraces the right of marital privacy though that right is not mentioned explicitly [emphasis added] in the Constitution” and is based on “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights [which] have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.”

This confusing language, which has no relationship whatsoever to what the Founding Fathers intended, gave married women permission to use the birth control pill. The Supreme Court literally created the “right to privacy” out of thin air.

We now know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that not only did the Supreme Court literally make up the right that you claim gives you permission to use birth control, but the most popular form of birth control, the pill, can kill innocent preborn children. If there is a chance that human beings are going to be murdered, I am going to do everything in my power to help prevent that from happening. If you knew there was a chance that someone might poison your neighbor, don’t you think you would try to notify your neighbor and do as much as you could to help save a life?

And before you despair that your right to privacy is being lost, take comfort in the knowledge that once we all finally live in a country where ideology is valued over evidence and our government is run by and for those who subscribe, or succumb, to the exciting agenda of these groups...privacy will no longer be needed. Your point of view and way of life will, conveniently, be decided for you. So what are you waiting for?! Sign up now!

Gillian Kane, of the International Women's Health Coalition, has a great post on RH Reality Check today detailing the controversial work and legacy of Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo who died Saturday. Trujillo was one the Catholic Church's highest ranking officials and headed up the "Pontifical Council for the Family" which, among other things, was dedicated to justifying the Church's anti-contraception agenda in the face of damning evidence of the damage its has resulted in worldwide.

Kane writes,

Trujillo was particularly active in the developing world where he preached against condom use. He argued that condoms were an ineffective prevention method against HIV/AIDS because they actually contributed to its spread by encouraging sexual promiscuity. Trujillo also argued, rather unscientifically that, "The AIDS virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom." No matter that Trujillo's arguments were quickly debunked by the World Health Organization, and criticized by the European Union Commission and UNAIDS, Trujillo went so far as to recommend that condom packets include warnings, similar to those on packs of cigarettes, cautioning that condoms do not prevent but rather encourage the spread of HIV/AIDS. Trujillo wasn't single minded in his opposition to condoms; he disparaged all forms of contraception, which he referred to as "biological colonialism" imposed on poor nations by pharmaceutical companies and rich countries. This was certainly a polemical, if not persuasive, argument in regions dealing with the aftereffects of colonial rule.

In my book, I discuss in depth Cardinal Trujillo's writing "Family Values verses Safe Sex" in which he claims "those promoting the condom without properly informing the public of its failure rates (both in its perfect use and in its typical use, and the cumulative risks), have led to, lead to, and will continue to lead to the death of many." What was particularly interesting about the Vatican's approach was that it appeared to rely on science for outcomes that it found fulfilling for other reasons. In a rare act of journalistic doggedness, the British Broadcasting Corporation examined the evidence on which Trujillo based his claims. "All [the scientists cited by the Vatican] told us they believe condoms are an essential component of an effective AIDS strategy and oppose the kind of general prohibition on condoms that Cardinal Trujillo advises," the BBC reported. In fact, the BBC discovered that "all authoritative AIDS specialists cited by the Cardinal do in fact support the use of condoms against HIV."

In fact, the BBC worked with one of the scientists cited by the Vatican, Dave Lytle, a former senior researcher at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who, in the 1980s, lead an investigation on the effectiveness of condoms. "My reaction is one of disappointment," Dave Lytle told the BBC. "[Trujillo] didn't pay attention to the paper, he took a number out of it, and basically misused it." Lytle told the BBC that the laboratory conditions of his test were not comparable to those that occur during sex. For one thing, the viruses he tested were one-fifth the size of the HIV virus, which he didn't test. Also, the pressures he used to test condoms were higher than those present in the typical sex act. Based on his research experience, Lytle concluded the exact opposite of what Trujillo wanted people to believe: normal intact condoms are "impermeable to HIV."

The Vatican has camped out on the wrong side of history on this issue and the guide that took them scandalously deeper into those woods, Trujillo, is no longer leading the way. Luckily, most Catholics worldwide have already discovered the dangerous journey they were being taken on, and have taken a better, safer, way. As for the Vatican, the search begins for another evidence-manipulating extremist to fill the position.

I always learn something from reading Jill Stanek’s popular blog. For example, today I learned Barack Obama promotes pedophilia. Who knew! And considering Stanek’s basis for claiming this, most of the adolescent medical establishment would be “pedophilia supporters” too. What earned Obama that claim is his support for providing sexually active minors accurate information about protection. The Society for Adolescent Medicine position statement on contraception is, “contraceptive education, counseling and services should be made available to all male and female adolescents desiring such care on the adolescents’ own consent without legal or financial barriers.” In Stanek’s view, Obama and the Society for Adolescent Medicine thereby believe children should be raped by adults. Of course, what makes her post so rich with irony is that just a few posts later she celebrates the arrival of the Pope, representative of the institution that covered up and, by aggressive inaction, sanctioned real pedophilia worldwide within its ranks for decades.