OPINION: Peter Miesler Misses the Mark on Amendment 69

Note: This opinion piece was intended for the Pagosa Daily Post, but editor Bill Hudson felt that he could not publish it because I was attacking Peter Miesler and because I sound too angry. He is correct.

The October 10 Pagosa Daily Post published Peter Miesler’s opinion piece “NARAL Missing the Mark on Amendment 69”. NARAL ProChoice Colorado is opposed to Amendment 69/ColoradoCare because the Colorado constitution does not allow tax dollars to fund abortions, and ColoradoCare is funded with our tax dollars. Miesler’s article is full of so many fallacious arguments that I feel I must respond.

Miesler says that since the ColoradoCare legal experts say that a newer amendment automatically supersedes a conflicting previous amendment, it must be true. It isn’t true, and personally, assuming the ColoradoCare legal experts had a hand in writing the hapless Amendment 69, I wouldn’t trust anything the ColoradoCare legal experts say.

Miesler dives into a diatribe about Right to Lifers vs. Right to Choosers. It seems that the purpose of this discussion is to deflect from the real issue, which is whether or not ColoradoCare will be able to fund abortions. Should the amendment pass, the courts would decide that, not any philosophical segment of our society.

But since Miesler wrote about the virtues of the Right to Lifers, I read it, and about fell out of my chair. Miesler designates a fetus as a category of life that I had never heard of – “potential human”. To quote Miesler, “It is a life form that has many challenges and hurdles to overcome before it can take on the mantle of human being. We know that nature, or God, allows a large percentage of conceptions to result in spontaneous abortions. So, who’s to say?”

There it is. A fetus is a potential human. I guess that makes a newborn a potential adult. This fallacious sort of logic in order to promote an ideology is sickening.

Miesler’s first name is Peter. He is a male, but unapologetically has written his opinion piece as though he has absolute knowledge of what a woman feels: “What we should say, acknowledge and demand is the recognition that the mother is supremely her own life and body. She is the host to that potential human being. She possesses an awareness and love for that little life developing inside of her beyond what any outsider can appreciate.”

Isn’t Miesler an outsider? Couldn’t the Amendment 69 proponents find a woman to sign this opinion piece? What a very bad joke.

Meisler goes on to say that a woman’s right to have an abortion is not society’s concern. 
At the same time he demands that society pay for that right, via our taxes. Another bad joke.

Who is Peter Meisler? Here’s one opinion that sounds about right to me, where Miesler is called out as a wacko left wing political writer who blames everything on right wing conspiracies.

I will be relieved when this election is over, and I won’t have to read any more Pagosa Daily Post propaganda pieces by Amendment 69 proponents that live everywhere but Pagosa Springs. Except one.