Get real: Bill Ritter is no pro-lifer

Here's news for Snarlin' Marla, the combative cohostess of that "meet Bill Ritter" abortion showdown depicted in Sunday's Henneberger book excerpt on PoliticsWest.  Notwithstanding the impression left by that account, Colorado's new governor is not pro-life in any meaningful way when you look at present-day public-policy realities.  Ritter's brave claim (and it was that, no doubt) to the 2005 pro-abortion women's meeting Henneberger describes -- that he'd sign legislation restricting abortion to a few exceptional situations -- isn't even a speck of possibility on the current horizon. 

First, Roe v. Wade would have to be overturned, which this year's Carhart case shows not even the "Roberts Court plus one" is likely to do, and second, the Colorado General Assembly -- Democratically controlled since 2004 and getting more so -- would have to send Ritter such a bill, which is equally as unlikely as the former eventuality.  Did you notice the freshman governor working with pro-life Dems in the legislature (who he feels are nonexistent anyway, according to Henneberger's account) to get any such bill introduced this year?  Me neither, and you never will if he's in office another seven years.

What Ritter did do this year is exactly what he promised the "strident money women" two years ago and the state Democratic convention last year: (1) restore state funding to Planned Parenthood, though this is arguably unconstitutional in Colorado, and (2) sign an "emergency contraception" bill, though most pro-lifers believe this involves abortifacient methods and oppose it accordingly.  Gov. Bill Owens had defunded Item 1 and twice vetoed Item 2.  Bob Beauprez, had he become governor, would have stood with Owens.

Marla Williams, Anne Frick, and the other 2005 doubters of Bill Ritter have ended up getting just what Elaine Berman and his other early pro-abortion supporters hoped for: a 2006 candidate who could win by, in part, mouthing empty rhetoric that dulled the traditional Republican pro-life edge, followed by a 2007-2011 chief executive who will give them incremental gains for their agenda, with negligible risk of his ever lifting a finger to govern in pro-life fashion.  Not a bad bargain.

Oh, and one more thing:  Notice Ritter's boast to the 2005 meeting that he had testified against our 2003 legislation which finally implemented parental notification for minor girls seeking an abortion in Colorado, after the voters' 1998 enactment had been suspended by court order for want of emergency bypass provisions.  Want to bet that one of these days while Dems have three-branch control in the state, we'll see a legislative effort to repeal or gut the parental notification law (it's only a statute, not part of the constitution) with Ritter's active support?

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