Is Kristi Burton the young Sarah Palin?
It’s hard to figure out what lies beneath Kristi Burton’s perfectly controlled exterior. She parrots the same phrases over and over in answer to every question regarding her impressive achievement of sponsoring the controversial Amendment 48. Amendment 48, a radical pro-life initiative on this year’s Colorado State ballot, states simply:
Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution defining the term "person" to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as "person" is used in those provisions of the Colorado constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law?
“I want to give a voice to the voiceless”, she snaps confidently, “and give the right of protection for every human being”. Amendment 48, she claims, “lays a common sense foundation upon which to establish a concrete definition of ‘personhood’ as supported by modern medical science”. And for the next 45 minutes, regardless of the questions, I’m treated to similar answers. Reading other interviews with her I recognize the exact same phrases, the same conclusions drawn by other journalists: that Kristi is a girl who has mastered the art of eradicating discussion with breathtaking efficiency. Is this evidence of a great future in politics, or a thorough training which borders on, dare I say it, brainwashing? After a repetitive interview in which I learn little about her personally other than that she thinks redefining the definition of ‘person’ to include an egg at the moment of fertilization is a great idea, I can’t help but nurture the sneaking suspicion that Kristi is a girl who has been exceptionally well-schooled in articulating a narrow view and doesn’t actually, herself, realize the vast implications of the initiative that she has so effectively spearheaded for the last year.
Kristi is an ideal figurehead for the pro-life movement. Pretty, blonde, intelligent, devoid of scandal, Kristi still lives at home with her parents in Colorado Springs and attends church regularly. She claims the idea of protecting the unborn came to her when sick in bed at aged 13. She felt, she said, it was the calling of her life to “give voice to the unborn child who doesn’t have a voice”. When I ask her why particularly the unborn child, when the already born are having a hard enough time of it - Colorado has one of the worst education records and womens' health initiatives in the United States - Kristi sounds defensive. “Well, I’m only 21,” she says, bristling. “I haven’t had the years it will take to help everyone else in the world, and right now I’m concentrating on giving a voice to the unborn. Hopefully I’ll move on in the future.”
Kristi claims the idea for the initiative came entirely from herself without any outside influence, although reluctantly admits to support from her family. She fails to mention Keith Mason - an older Right Wing Pro-Lifer who is the Director and Grassroots organizer for her group, Colorado for Equal Rights. Together Mason and his wife, Jennifer, both originally from Wichita, Kansas - what they term 'the abortion capital' of the US - founded a pro-life group entitled ‘Missionaries to America’ which references Colorado for Equal Rights on its website. Back in Kansas, Keith and Jennifer led the fight against ‘Tiller the Killer’, a doctor who ran an abortion clinic in Wichita. According to the American Missionaries website, Keith was personally responsible for increasing their ‘truth truck’ fleet from 4 to 9. A truth truck is a vehicle that carries photographs of ‘victims’ of abortion and, apparently according to the Operation Rescue website, photographs of Holocaust victims from World War II. Keith currently spreads the word of God and the Pro-Life messages to schools across the country, while a pregnant Jennifer stays at home to look after their two young daughters. He claims that he heard Kristi on the radio one day, and instantly offered his support for the campaign.
Many opponents, such as the snide political website ‘Wonkette’, have suggested Mason is primarily responsible for the idea of Amendment 48, but Kristi remains obstinate that the impetus for the idea came from her 13 year old self. Among other groups supporting Amendment 48 are Human Life International, a group that exists “to fight the evils of abortion, contraception, sex education and family breakdown”, The American Life League and dozens of others. If this makes Kristi merely a puppet, she is a puppet who is confident, precocious and unafraid, although unwavering from her claim that Amendment 48 is merely her chance to “give a voice to the voiceless”. It’s not the group’s intention, she says, to do anything more than define personhood - and overturn Roe Vs. Wade.
It is exceptionally easy for a state citizen to get an amendment onto the ballot in Colorado, unlike in Oregon or Montana, which all tried and failed to sponsor pro-life initiatives for the 2008 ballot. All Kristi needed was, in this case, 76,048 signatures – one reason, Emilie Ailts of NARAL suggests, that Colorado was targeted by the pro-life movement. Kristi and her group, the inappropriately named Colorado for Equal Rights, managed to get 131, 000 signatures for the ballot from various religious groups, predominantly Catholic, according to Keith Mason. The passage of 48, the “Personhood Initiative” was not entirely easy as pro-choice movements such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL challenged the decision in the Colorado Supreme Courts on the grounds that the amendment’s language was misleading. The courts found 7 - 0 in favor of Kristi and her group, and Amendment 48 made its controversial way onto Colorado’s ballot this year.
Despite Mason and Burton’s suggestions to the contrary, Amendment 48 has not received universal support in the right-to-life community, and has split many prominent pro-life groups. The Colorado Catholic conference, for example, does not endorse it despite Mason’s repeated claims that they do, and notably absent from their supporters are the National Right to Life, and the Republican Candidate for Senate, Bob Schaffer.
For all her confidence and stridentness, Kristi Burton is a young 21 – someone who evades answering whether she owns a passport, or has traveled more extensively than her recent national tour on the Republican and pro-life circuit. On her website one can find a video clip of an earnest, breathless and slightly patronizing Kristi recounting a case where an eight and a half month pregnant woman was killed in a car accident, and yet the child’s death was not taken into consideration when sentencing the man responsible. Under amendment 48, justice could be gained for the death of this unborn child, not just the mother, Kristi proclaims. The video ends with a somewhat inappropriately triumphant Kristi, beaming into the camera at the simplicity of her proposed amendment – one that will purportedly gain justice for the unborn victims of modern society.
Kristi was home-schooled, and even now lives with her parents as she completes a degree at an online school, Oak Brook College of Law and Government whose mission is “to build and establish the Biblical foundations of truth, righteousness, justice, mercy, equity, integrity, and the fear of God in legal education and in the professional arenas of law and government policy.”
Kristi doesn’t think that her youth and lack of exposure to the ‘outside’ world makes her views any less valid. She lives in the right-wing evangelical hotbed of Colorado Springs but is not, she makes pains to assert, associated with any of the radical right-wing groups in that area, such as Focus on the Family. What I find most uncomfortable about this articulate and pleasant young girl is simply her stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Amendment 48 will have radical implications not only for women’s rights, but for any Colorado state law that contains the word ‘person’, resulting in a bureaucratic mess of nightmare proportions as each existing law will have to be re-examined.
In contrast to earlier articles where Ms. Burton refuses to acknowledge that the intent of the initiative is to prevent access to abortion, Kristi openly talks to me about the impact Amendment 48 will have in overturning Roe Vs. Wade. Roe Vs. Wade recognized that laws banning abortion undermined a woman’s right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. In Roe Vs. Wade the Court's determination of whether a fetus can enjoy constitutional protection was separate from the notion of when life begins: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." The Court only believed itself positioned to resolve the question of fetal viability. In 1973 fetal viability was determined at what point the fetus could live outside the womb, around 21 weeks. The mother could abort for any reason, up to this point of fetal viability.
Kristi’s claim is that the judges in Roe Vs. Wade would have welcomed the ‘modern medical science,’ that, she says, proves “without a doubt that life starts at the moment of conception”, and therefore, by extension, that a fertilized egg “is a person without a voice.”
Amendment 48 would undoubtedly provide grounds for denying women access to contraceptives and IVF. The morning after pill, the pill, the IUD and nuvaring all make the womb an inhospitable environment for an already fertilized egg. Thus, they may be declared unconstitutional – not on the grounds that they do not allow an egg to implant, an egg that still needs a uterus to gestate - but they effectively ‘kill’ a ‘person’.
“The impact of this initiative will extend far beyond the legality of abortion. If fertilized eggs have the legal right to access Colorado’s courts – which is one of the rights that would be granted by this initiative – what does this really mean for Coloradans?” Kathryn Wittneben, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado asks. “Does this mean fertilized eggs can petition the courts to make it illegal to use the most effective forms of birth control if those contraceptive methods create an inhospitable uterine environment for fertilized eggs? Does this mean that a fertilized egg can sue a pregnant woman if she miscarries? If we’re talking about granting rights to fertilized eggs, all of these questions about possible negative impacts and legal consequences have to be raised.”
Kristi dismisses these claims as “Scare tactics - hypothetical situations and myths perpetuated by our opponents” and “having no basis in reality”. When I say that redefining a person affects all state laws that contain the word person, Kristi is obstinate. “This amendment could not do that.” Kristi is at pains to assure me that there are no laws banning abortion in Colorado. “You can have an abortion up to nine months,” she says earnestly, conveniently forgetting that Federal law supersedes State law, and that Federal law puts a cap on abortions after 21 weeks in the United States. When I ask if Kristi would like the US to be placed in the same league as Malta, Ireland, Nicaragua and El Salvador, all countries in which abortion is a serious felony, and all countries which have questionable human rights records for women Kristi refuses to answer the question and returns to her favorite phrase. “Those countries are all Catholic. Our separation of church and state would not allow that situation to develop. All I want to do is give a voice to the voiceless.” The fact is, the pro-life movement chose a perfect figurehead in Little Miss Perfect Kristi Burton.
Kristi’s new favorite phrase in the run-up to the election seems to be ‘modern medical science’ and she deliberately avoids religious terminology in her conversations with me. In a press release from Keith Mason decrying the recent news that amendment 48 faces opposition from over 7,000 medical practitioners in Colorado, Mason includes quotes from practitioners who apparently support Amendment 48, including one Dr Sam Alexander, who states "At the time of fertilization, a single-cell embryo (zygote) contains all of the genetic information and biologic capacity to proceed through sequential developmental stages to a fetus, newborn, adolescent, and adult human being... The fact that a zygote is a person may be an "inconvenient truth", but we can't establish truths based upon what consequences we desire. We must establish truth first, then establish policies based upon that truth.”
Modern medical science, Kristi repeats constantly, is behind her belief that a fertilized egg at the moment of conception is a person. Modern medical science, according to Kristi, has advanced so much since 1973 that now one can define the moment life begins. It’s interesting, however, that Kristi doesn’t feel that this very same modern medical science can answer every question on how and when life came into being. She refuses to answer my query on whether she believes in Evolution and Darwinism, but in a previous interview with the Denver Westworld News in September she admitted, “I don’t feel like there is enough scientific evidence to prove evolution, and I think there is a lot of science on the other end that proves creationism.”
If only everything in life were so simple as Kristi Burton’s black-and-white ‘modern, medical’ world view. If amendment 48 passes, it may well be.
Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution defining the term "person" to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as "person" is used in those provisions of the Colorado constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law?
“I want to give a voice to the voiceless”, she snaps confidently, “and give the right of protection for every human being”. Amendment 48, she claims, “lays a common sense foundation upon which to establish a concrete definition of ‘personhood’ as supported by modern medical science”. And for the next 45 minutes, regardless of the questions, I’m treated to similar answers. Reading other interviews with her I recognize the exact same phrases, the same conclusions drawn by other journalists: that Kristi is a girl who has mastered the art of eradicating discussion with breathtaking efficiency. Is this evidence of a great future in politics, or a thorough training which borders on, dare I say it, brainwashing? After a repetitive interview in which I learn little about her personally other than that she thinks redefining the definition of ‘person’ to include an egg at the moment of fertilization is a great idea, I can’t help but nurture the sneaking suspicion that Kristi is a girl who has been exceptionally well-schooled in articulating a narrow view and doesn’t actually, herself, realize the vast implications of the initiative that she has so effectively spearheaded for the last year.
Kristi is an ideal figurehead for the pro-life movement. Pretty, blonde, intelligent, devoid of scandal, Kristi still lives at home with her parents in Colorado Springs and attends church regularly. She claims the idea of protecting the unborn came to her when sick in bed at aged 13. She felt, she said, it was the calling of her life to “give voice to the unborn child who doesn’t have a voice”. When I ask her why particularly the unborn child, when the already born are having a hard enough time of it - Colorado has one of the worst education records and womens' health initiatives in the United States - Kristi sounds defensive. “Well, I’m only 21,” she says, bristling. “I haven’t had the years it will take to help everyone else in the world, and right now I’m concentrating on giving a voice to the unborn. Hopefully I’ll move on in the future.”
Kristi claims the idea for the initiative came entirely from herself without any outside influence, although reluctantly admits to support from her family. She fails to mention Keith Mason - an older Right Wing Pro-Lifer who is the Director and Grassroots organizer for her group, Colorado for Equal Rights. Together Mason and his wife, Jennifer, both originally from Wichita, Kansas - what they term 'the abortion capital' of the US - founded a pro-life group entitled ‘Missionaries to America’ which references Colorado for Equal Rights on its website. Back in Kansas, Keith and Jennifer led the fight against ‘Tiller the Killer’, a doctor who ran an abortion clinic in Wichita. According to the American Missionaries website, Keith was personally responsible for increasing their ‘truth truck’ fleet from 4 to 9. A truth truck is a vehicle that carries photographs of ‘victims’ of abortion and, apparently according to the Operation Rescue website, photographs of Holocaust victims from World War II. Keith currently spreads the word of God and the Pro-Life messages to schools across the country, while a pregnant Jennifer stays at home to look after their two young daughters. He claims that he heard Kristi on the radio one day, and instantly offered his support for the campaign.
Many opponents, such as the snide political website ‘Wonkette’, have suggested Mason is primarily responsible for the idea of Amendment 48, but Kristi remains obstinate that the impetus for the idea came from her 13 year old self. Among other groups supporting Amendment 48 are Human Life International, a group that exists “to fight the evils of abortion, contraception, sex education and family breakdown”, The American Life League and dozens of others. If this makes Kristi merely a puppet, she is a puppet who is confident, precocious and unafraid, although unwavering from her claim that Amendment 48 is merely her chance to “give a voice to the voiceless”. It’s not the group’s intention, she says, to do anything more than define personhood - and overturn Roe Vs. Wade.
It is exceptionally easy for a state citizen to get an amendment onto the ballot in Colorado, unlike in Oregon or Montana, which all tried and failed to sponsor pro-life initiatives for the 2008 ballot. All Kristi needed was, in this case, 76,048 signatures – one reason, Emilie Ailts of NARAL suggests, that Colorado was targeted by the pro-life movement. Kristi and her group, the inappropriately named Colorado for Equal Rights, managed to get 131, 000 signatures for the ballot from various religious groups, predominantly Catholic, according to Keith Mason. The passage of 48, the “Personhood Initiative” was not entirely easy as pro-choice movements such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL challenged the decision in the Colorado Supreme Courts on the grounds that the amendment’s language was misleading. The courts found 7 - 0 in favor of Kristi and her group, and Amendment 48 made its controversial way onto Colorado’s ballot this year.
Despite Mason and Burton’s suggestions to the contrary, Amendment 48 has not received universal support in the right-to-life community, and has split many prominent pro-life groups. The Colorado Catholic conference, for example, does not endorse it despite Mason’s repeated claims that they do, and notably absent from their supporters are the National Right to Life, and the Republican Candidate for Senate, Bob Schaffer.
For all her confidence and stridentness, Kristi Burton is a young 21 – someone who evades answering whether she owns a passport, or has traveled more extensively than her recent national tour on the Republican and pro-life circuit. On her website one can find a video clip of an earnest, breathless and slightly patronizing Kristi recounting a case where an eight and a half month pregnant woman was killed in a car accident, and yet the child’s death was not taken into consideration when sentencing the man responsible. Under amendment 48, justice could be gained for the death of this unborn child, not just the mother, Kristi proclaims. The video ends with a somewhat inappropriately triumphant Kristi, beaming into the camera at the simplicity of her proposed amendment – one that will purportedly gain justice for the unborn victims of modern society.
Kristi was home-schooled, and even now lives with her parents as she completes a degree at an online school, Oak Brook College of Law and Government whose mission is “to build and establish the Biblical foundations of truth, righteousness, justice, mercy, equity, integrity, and the fear of God in legal education and in the professional arenas of law and government policy.”
Kristi doesn’t think that her youth and lack of exposure to the ‘outside’ world makes her views any less valid. She lives in the right-wing evangelical hotbed of Colorado Springs but is not, she makes pains to assert, associated with any of the radical right-wing groups in that area, such as Focus on the Family. What I find most uncomfortable about this articulate and pleasant young girl is simply her stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Amendment 48 will have radical implications not only for women’s rights, but for any Colorado state law that contains the word ‘person’, resulting in a bureaucratic mess of nightmare proportions as each existing law will have to be re-examined.
In contrast to earlier articles where Ms. Burton refuses to acknowledge that the intent of the initiative is to prevent access to abortion, Kristi openly talks to me about the impact Amendment 48 will have in overturning Roe Vs. Wade. Roe Vs. Wade recognized that laws banning abortion undermined a woman’s right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. In Roe Vs. Wade the Court's determination of whether a fetus can enjoy constitutional protection was separate from the notion of when life begins: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." The Court only believed itself positioned to resolve the question of fetal viability. In 1973 fetal viability was determined at what point the fetus could live outside the womb, around 21 weeks. The mother could abort for any reason, up to this point of fetal viability.
Kristi’s claim is that the judges in Roe Vs. Wade would have welcomed the ‘modern medical science,’ that, she says, proves “without a doubt that life starts at the moment of conception”, and therefore, by extension, that a fertilized egg “is a person without a voice.”
Amendment 48 would undoubtedly provide grounds for denying women access to contraceptives and IVF. The morning after pill, the pill, the IUD and nuvaring all make the womb an inhospitable environment for an already fertilized egg. Thus, they may be declared unconstitutional – not on the grounds that they do not allow an egg to implant, an egg that still needs a uterus to gestate - but they effectively ‘kill’ a ‘person’.
“The impact of this initiative will extend far beyond the legality of abortion. If fertilized eggs have the legal right to access Colorado’s courts – which is one of the rights that would be granted by this initiative – what does this really mean for Coloradans?” Kathryn Wittneben, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado asks. “Does this mean fertilized eggs can petition the courts to make it illegal to use the most effective forms of birth control if those contraceptive methods create an inhospitable uterine environment for fertilized eggs? Does this mean that a fertilized egg can sue a pregnant woman if she miscarries? If we’re talking about granting rights to fertilized eggs, all of these questions about possible negative impacts and legal consequences have to be raised.”
Kristi dismisses these claims as “Scare tactics - hypothetical situations and myths perpetuated by our opponents” and “having no basis in reality”. When I say that redefining a person affects all state laws that contain the word person, Kristi is obstinate. “This amendment could not do that.” Kristi is at pains to assure me that there are no laws banning abortion in Colorado. “You can have an abortion up to nine months,” she says earnestly, conveniently forgetting that Federal law supersedes State law, and that Federal law puts a cap on abortions after 21 weeks in the United States. When I ask if Kristi would like the US to be placed in the same league as Malta, Ireland, Nicaragua and El Salvador, all countries in which abortion is a serious felony, and all countries which have questionable human rights records for women Kristi refuses to answer the question and returns to her favorite phrase. “Those countries are all Catholic. Our separation of church and state would not allow that situation to develop. All I want to do is give a voice to the voiceless.” The fact is, the pro-life movement chose a perfect figurehead in Little Miss Perfect Kristi Burton.
Kristi’s new favorite phrase in the run-up to the election seems to be ‘modern medical science’ and she deliberately avoids religious terminology in her conversations with me. In a press release from Keith Mason decrying the recent news that amendment 48 faces opposition from over 7,000 medical practitioners in Colorado, Mason includes quotes from practitioners who apparently support Amendment 48, including one Dr Sam Alexander, who states "At the time of fertilization, a single-cell embryo (zygote) contains all of the genetic information and biologic capacity to proceed through sequential developmental stages to a fetus, newborn, adolescent, and adult human being... The fact that a zygote is a person may be an "inconvenient truth", but we can't establish truths based upon what consequences we desire. We must establish truth first, then establish policies based upon that truth.”
Modern medical science, Kristi repeats constantly, is behind her belief that a fertilized egg at the moment of conception is a person. Modern medical science, according to Kristi, has advanced so much since 1973 that now one can define the moment life begins. It’s interesting, however, that Kristi doesn’t feel that this very same modern medical science can answer every question on how and when life came into being. She refuses to answer my query on whether she believes in Evolution and Darwinism, but in a previous interview with the Denver Westworld News in September she admitted, “I don’t feel like there is enough scientific evidence to prove evolution, and I think there is a lot of science on the other end that proves creationism.”
If only everything in life were so simple as Kristi Burton’s black-and-white ‘modern, medical’ world view. If amendment 48 passes, it may well be.
MIMI IN NY | 11:26 PM |
