Good afternoon. Welcome to the 1995 Colorado March for Life. This is the 25th year we have gathered to publicly protest against the governmental decisions to attempt to remove from unborn human children their unalienable Right to Life. This began when, 1n 1967, the Colorado Legislature made this the first state to “liberalize” its abortion laws, and other states soon followed. In 1973, the Supreme Court, in two decisions on January 22, effectively continued that process by removing legal protection from unborn children throughout the nation and throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy.

Our theme, “Choose Life, Defend Life, No Exceptions, No Compromise” is a call for an end to the legalized violence which has allowed over 30 million children to be killed, and a call to instead restore the legal protection implicit in the Declaration of Independence’s statement that ALL are created equal, with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We call on individuals to choose life and on governments to defend life.

We are calling for an all-inclusive recognition of the human family, rather than making exceptions to exclude some from legal protection. This is wrapped up in a legal term, personhood. The Roe and Doe decisions did not question the humanity of unborn children, but rather explicitly excluded them from the legal category of persons. In fact, Justice Blackmun wrote that if the unborn were persons, Roe v. Wade would collapse, because the Fourteenth Amendment would compel their protection. There can be no exceptions, no compromise by allowing “just a little bit” of private killing.

The issue of personhood, and of all-inclusive equal protection, does not stop with abortion. Other attempts to allow the deliberate killing of innocent human beings keep being made, notably in the areas of infanticide and euthanasia. Courts and legislatures have sought to allow the starvation or dehydration deaths of elderly or disabled persons whose quality of life doesn’t measure up to their standards. Some have sought to withhold normal care from disabled infants, attempting to cause their deaths. These exceptions, this compromise, must not be allowed. This issue will not go away, as long as innocent human beings are being killed. We will continue our efforts until “Don’t Kill” is once again the position of our laws, and of our society.

Thank you.