A pink wave washes over Colorado
You could feel the beginning of the wave on that cold morning in January 2017. More than 100,000 people gathered in Denver’s Civic Center Park to participate in the first Women’s March.
Among those in the crowd were some familiar faces, folks who work to protect and expand reproductive rights every day. But even more exciting were the legions of new faces, standing up perhaps for the first time, or the first time in 30 years, to say that women’s voices and reproductive rights would not be ignored.
Leading up to the midterm elections, political experts debated whether we’d have what they called a “blue wave.” But what the Women’s March marked was the beginning of a distinctly pink wave that has swept Colorado in the time since. Once again, voters in our state made it clear that health care and reproductive rights are a top priority for Coloradans. They are simply not up for debate.
Colorado elected a strong advocate in Gov.-elect Jared Polis, who will continue to strengthen the policies that have made our state a national role model in access to care. Our state has seen unintended pregnancies plummet among teenagers and young women because of increased access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARCS), saving the state about $70 million over a 10-year period. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment have provided about 100,000 LARCS since 2010. Abortion rates have fallen precipitously among teens and women. And Polis has said in no uncertain terms that he will protect and expand these and other programs that will continue to improve access.
With strong, supportive majorities in both chambers of the state legislature and a newly elected attorney general, Phil Weiser, who has pledged to fight to uphold equal protections for women on the state and federal levels, Colorado is poised to remain a safe haven for the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health care.
But even as we celebrate these decisive wins in Colorado, there are national forces at work attempting to limit reproductive rights.
The Trump administration has proposed a one-two punch that would deny millions of women access to birth control and abortion care. Trump’s Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) is finalizing rules that would allow employers to opt out of no co-pay birth control coverage for unspecified “moral” reasons. Nationally, that would impact 62 million women, including 17 million Latinas and 15 million African American women. Trump’s HHS has also proposed a rule that would make it impossible for health insurance plans to cover abortion care under the Affordable Care Act. These policies will reduce access to contraception, thereby increasing unintended pregnancies, all the while making it harder to access abortion.
Federal courts in Pennsylvania and California struck down the Trump proposals limiting birth control coverage last year, but the Trump administration continues to push what it refers to as its “secret plan.” Legal challenges will continue as the Trump administration advocates an agenda that would take women’s reproductive rights back almost 50 years.
Colorado must and will remain a safe haven for health care, especially as patients from neighboring states see their access to sexual and reproductive health care undermined or even eliminated altogether. Colorado vot- have never wavered on this issue.
Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado and other reproductive rights advocates will support Polis and the new and returning lawmakers as they work to expand access to health care for everyone who seeks it. We plan to ensure that basic rights and common sense, not politics, rule the day.
We felt the first rumblings of our pink wave in January 2017, and we saw the decisive results in November 2018. Colorado will continue to be that paragon of reproductive rights and care, protecting and further expanding access to the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health care for all people, no matter what.