Colo. Right To Life Criticizes State Republican Party After Being Shunned At Convention

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 23 Jun 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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Colorado Right to Life, which was not allowed to set up a display table at the state Republican Party convention Monday, said the party is ignoring its base and is headed for defeat in November, the Denver Post reports (Hoover, Denver Post 6/18).

State GOP chair Dick Wadhams said he denied the group a table because members had criticized U.S. Senate nominee Bob Schaffer over his position on human rights violations in the Northern Mariana Islands, where Chinese factory workers have allegedly undergone forced abortions (Denver Post, 6/18). CRTL also has accused Schaffer of not taking a position on a "personhood" initiative that would extend legal rights to a fertilized egg under the Colorado Constitution. A CRTL release stated, "Wadhams has moved ... Schaffer to the liberal middle and he's trying to drag the Colorado GOP to the left."

Wadhams said, "Any organization that publicly attacks the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate is not going to be allowed to buy table space" at the convention (Bartels, Denver Rocky Mountain News, 6/17). Wadhams also said, "The Colorado Republican Party has good relations with legitimate pro-life organizations," adding, "I do not believe it [CRTL] is a legitimate pro-life organization. I regard it as a fringe organization that is out of touch with the mainstream pro-life movement."

According to the Post, CRTL is considered a "rogue" organization by some abortion-rights opponents for its "all-or-nothing approach" to overturning Roe v. Wade. It was kicked out of the National Right to Life Committee after it criticized James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, over a statement he made about a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld a federal ban (PL 108-105) on so-called "partial-birth" abortion (Denver Post, 6/18).

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