BY FREDA MIKLIN
GOVERNMENTAL REPORTER
When we met Marla Fernandez, the GOP candidate for Colorado HD 3 who is challenging incumbent Meg Froelich, at a meet-and-greet at her home on September 10, she told us, “I had no idea that I would actually run for office. It was a miracle that I got nominated at the Republican caucus. I was also unopposed in the Republican primary and that was also a miracle. I’m a paralegal and left my law career to homeschool my son. I’ve been homeschooling for 11 years. As a paralegal, I thought I could do a better job than most of the teachers in school. If elected, I will reform our education system.”
Photos by Freda Miklin
She continued, “One issue that I really care about is uniting Democrats and Republicans. I need help from the community building unity. Everybody cares about the same things… and together, there is order, method and strength… If we come together as Americans again and tolerate the things that we don’t like, in order to work together to make it better, we will be able to fix the homelessness, we will be able to fix the crime, we will be able to fix society, and make it better for our neighbors to dwell in it.”
Fernandez has strong feelings about reproductive health care. She told us, “I’m not going to ban abortion. There is a liberty issue and there is a life issue. RHEA (the Reproductive Health Equity Act passed by the general assembly in the 2022 session) doesn’t even talk about the Constitutional deprivation of life and liberty…The state has an interest in protecting life and liberty. RHEA doesn’t protect women, it just protects the providers’ rights…Half the providers say there is a life in there and half say it’s a clump of cells…The provider needs to educate the woman. There are a lot of women who are uneducated. They don’t understand what they have inside…Did you know that, as soon as a woman hears a heartbeat, that’s when she actually realizes that she has a baby inside of her?… A lot of times, providers say, ‘You know, you’re going to ruin your career. It’s just a clump of cells.’
She continued, “I read Roe (U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade of 1973) extensively. I know the law and it doesn’t even go with Roe. At the very least, we should read Roe and have a discussion on Roe and RHEA. RHEA is unconstitutional because the state has an interest in protecting life.” We asked Fernandez why, if RHEA is unconstitutional, no one has brought a legal action against the state on that basis? She told us, “We need to but it does take time…Somebody needs to bring an action that actually had a failed abortion or had something in order to bring it up.”
Fernandez told us she had been “booted” from events she attended at the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, “just for asking basic legal questions,” adding, “If we can’t debate this issue, then we can’t resolve this issue.”
We inquired, “If you are elected to the legislature and the Republican party is in the majority, giving you a real voice, what would you propose should be the law on this subject?” She told us, “I would propose that we have a full discussion on all the issues that are in place,” adding, “Our district is divided as Democrats. Half of the Democrats think that life starts at conception…so I would propose to repeal the law (RHEA) and start again with a discussion.”
Fernandez said she took her 11-year-old son to the legislature to listen to the testimony when RHEA was being debated because she “wants him to see what activism is all about.” She told us that, “There were only 50 who were in favor of abortion and 350+ people were there against abortion. You need a unanimous consensus.”
Another issue Fernandez said motivated her to run for the general assembly was that, “Article One, Section Two, Clause Three (of the U.S. Constitution) says that the state has every right to directly tax its people and apportion its people and pay union dues for the United States,” adding, “At the state level, I can initiate legislation that pits the state (against) the federal government and puts us in the U.S. Supreme Court to hear whether Amendment 16, that says that the federal government can directly tax the people, is valid. I think that contradicts Article One, Section Two, Clause Three.” We confirmed that she was making the point that the federal government does not have the right to tax U.S. citizens, according to the Constitution.
Fernandez would also “redraft the Science of Reading Act.” The Colorado Department of Education describes the Science of Reading as, “a model that organizes the skills needed to become a proficient and successful reader into the categories of word recognition and language comprehension.”
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