The Denver Post’s John Frank and Lynn Bartels have a jaw-dropping report on the debate between gubernatorial candidates Gov. John Hickenlooper and his batshit crazy Republican rival Bob Beauprez, a microcosm of the sheer insanity that has taken over the GOP, not just in Colorado but across the nation.

Beauprez has clearly been advised by his media consultants to avoid openly opposing contraception (even though he obviously does). So he said:

When it was time for the candidates to ask each other questions, Hickenlooper pressed Beauprez about personhood, abortion and birth control. He asked whether Beauprez would support using public money to reduce abortions and teen pregnancies.

“I have no problem with people using contraception,” Beauprez said.

But then, he said he considers IUDs to be the same as abortions.

“I have a big problem publicly funding contraceptives that are actually abortifacient.”

He said he considered intrauterine devices, a common form of birth control known as IUDs, the equivalent to a drug that causes an abortion.

Just for the record, IUDs work by preventing sperm from reaching eggs in the uterus. Anyone who equates this with an “abortifacient” is, not to put too fine a point on it, a complete anti-choice fanatic, and someone who has no freaking idea how the biological process of conception works.

Gov. Hickenlooper pushed back against this crazy opinion with some facts that I’m sure went completely ignored by Beauprez’s right wing audience.

Hickenlooper touted a state program that helped lower teen birth rates drop by 40 percent in five years after more than 30,000 IUDs and other implants were provided to low-income women at 68 family-planning clinics across Colorado since 2009. The cost was covered by a private anonymous donor.

And then, the subject turned to climate change, and you can probably guess what happened next; yes, Beauprez thinks “powers bigger than us” (read: God) are determining whether climate change destroys the human race, so we should just, I don’t know, pray harder or something.

Asked whether humans were “contributing significantly” to climate change, Beauprez said no. He later quibbled with the word “significantly,” as he acknowledged humans should do everything they can to reduce their impact.

“But are we going to end or alter the path that Earth’s evolution is going to take? I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the Earth’s already figured that out and powers bigger than us have figured that out.”