[Colorado for Equal Rights] plans to circulate petitions to amend our state constitution to define "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." In other words, it's another attempt to ban abortion. And it could even be an end run around Roe v. Wade, by some legal reasoning.
Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of the 1973 Roe decision, noted that if the "suggestion of personhood is established," then the right to abortion "collapses, for the fetus's right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the Amendment," which provides that no state can "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." So, the state defines a fertilized human egg as a person, and that person is entitled to due process of law.
That's where county coroners might play a big role. Under state law, as explained by the Summit County Coroner's office, the coroner is supposed to investigate "all victims of homicide or suspected homicide," as well as "victims of accidental death or suspected accidental death." Ferreting out abortions would be tricky enough: "We just got a tip from a neighbor that a 19-year-old girl down the street looked chubby, went to Mexico for three days, and came back thinner. Want me to bring her in for questioning?" But even miscarriages would also have to be investigated as a "suspected homicide" or "accidental death."
