{"id":3412,"date":"2007-01-17T11:05:37","date_gmt":"2007-01-17T11:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/colorado-funding.html"},"modified":"2007-01-17T11:05:37","modified_gmt":"2007-01-17T11:05:37","slug":"colorado-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/colorado-funding.html","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Funding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We followed the Colorado governor&#8217;s race just a bit. The winner, Bill Ritter, is a Catholic (whose <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockymountainnews.com\/drmn\/local\/article\/0,1299,DRMN_15_5274200,00.html\">participation in a Mass in celebration of his office on his inauguration day was a matter of some controversy)<\/a> and this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ontheissues.org\/Governor\/Bill_Ritter_Abortion.htm\">was his campaign stance on abortion:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Based on my faith, I am personally opposed to abortion. But I recognize that people who disagree with me on this issue hold equally strong convictions. We all would like to see fewer women facing an unintended pregnancy. To reach this common ground, we must: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Make a stronger commitment to family planning. I will restore the funding to Planned Parenthood. <\/li>\n<li>Ensure better access to health care for all women, including birth control and emergency contraception without a doctor&#8217;s prescription.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Because, you see, women are pretty, pretty stupid and need Planned Parenthood and the government to help them figure stuff out. <\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But that&#8217;s not the point. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifenews.com\/state1987.html\">Just a month after his election, Ritter announced his intention to see funding restored to Planned Parenthood<\/a>. In his most recent column, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archden.org\/dcr\/news.php?e=402&amp;s=2&amp;a=8444\">Archbishop Chaput criticizes this:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Governor Bill Ritter packed a great deal of good will, good sense and hope into his first \u201cstate of the state\u201d message to Colorado legislators on Jan. 11. This is consistent with the man. His desire to improve <\/p>\n<p>Colorado<\/p>\n<p>health care and education is admirable. So is his emphasis on judging all potential legislation by the same standard \u2014 specifically, in his words, \u201cHow does this [bill] create a better future for our children and our children\u2019s children?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now comes the hard part: governing. In the long run, all of us \u2014 homemakers, shopkeepers, clergy, athletes and public officials \u2014 are judged by what we do, not by what we say. How our words translate into action shapes what we accomplish and what we become.<\/p>\n<p>In that light, Mr. Ritter\u2019s stated commitment to \u201crestore eligibility requirements for state funding for pregnancy prevention and family planning programs\u201d is seriously flawed public policy. It\u2019s hard to have a future \u201cfor our children and our children\u2019s children\u201d without children, and in practice, Planned Parenthood specializes in the business of preventing them. Even more troubling is Planned Parenthood\u2019s long involvement in abortion \u201crights\u201d and the lethal services associated with them. Helping women kill their unborn children abuses the real well-being of women. It also violates the dignity of unborn children in a brutally intimate and permanent way.<\/p>\n<p>The day after Governor Ritter\u2019s speech, <\/p>\n<p>Denver<\/p>\n<p>\u2019s Channel 9 reported that he \u201cwould take steps to allow organizations such as Planned Parenthood to get state funding again if they can prove state money isn\u2019t used to fund abortions [emphasis added].\u201d Mr. Ritter ran as a pro-life candidate and has always stated that he opposes abortion. As he begins his public service, it\u2019s reasonable to believe him. The new governor has been engaged and active in his Catholic faith for many years, and remains so. <\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, it\u2019s very hard to reconcile anyone who is \u201cpro-life\u201d with any support for Planned Parenthood and its destructive record. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/ranger\/ci_5020545\">The Denver Post on the conflict<\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We followed the Colorado governor&#8217;s race just a bit. The winner, Bill Ritter, is a Catholic (whose participation in a Mass in celebration of his office on his inauguration day was a matter of some controversy) and this was his campaign stance on abortion: Based on my faith, I am personally opposed to abortion. But&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Colorado Funding - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/colorado-funding.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Colorado Funding - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We followed the Colorado governor&#8217;s race just a bit. The winner, Bill Ritter, is a Catholic (whose participation in a Mass in celebration of his office on his inauguration day was a matter of some controversy) and this was his campaign stance on abortion: Based on my faith, I am personally opposed to abortion. 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The winner, Bill Ritter, is a Catholic (whose participation in a Mass in celebration of his office on his inauguration day was a matter of some controversy) and this was his campaign stance on abortion: Based on my faith, I am personally opposed to abortion. But&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/colorado-funding.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-01-17T11:05:37+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/colorado-funding.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/colorado-funding.html","name":"Colorado Funding - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-01-17T11:05:37+00:00","dateModified":"2007-01-17T11:05:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/colorado-funding.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/colorado-funding.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/colorado-funding.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Colorado Funding"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}