Advocates say Colo. movement struggling
Anti-abortion advocates at a Friday March for Life rally told a gathering of hundreds at the state Capitol that Colorado was “struggling in terms of building a culture of life right now.”
State Rep. Brandi Bradley, a Douglas County Republican, described Colorado as a state “focused on death” with some of the most “radical and extreme abortion laws in the country.”
At a time when surrounding states like Arizona have enacted abortion bans or restrictions, Colorado has earned a reputation as a haven for people seeking abortion and reproductive health care.
Months before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe vs. Wade — the 1973 ruling that secured the right to have an abortion in the U.S. Constitution — Colorado enshrined the right to an abortion in state law.
In 2023, Democratic legislators passed additional laws offering protections to doctors who perform abortions for people coming from states with abortion bans, among other reproductive health issues.
Colorado voters have consistently rejected abortion restrictions over the years.
“We are a pro-murder state,” Bradley said. “This state is not pro-choice. It’s pro-abortion only.”
Bradley and other anti-abortion speakers at the rally warned of a proposed state constitutional amendment brewing that would further secure abortion rights in the state.
Proposed Initiative 89 would codify the right to abortion access in the Colorado Constitution and repeal a ban on public funds going toward abortions, meaning state employees or students on university health plans could use their insurance to pay for an abortion.
Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom, a coalition of abortion rights advocates, announced Friday that they had surpassed the number of signatures needed to get the initiative on the 2024 November ballot where voters can decide its fate.
The hundreds of attendees who turned out for Colorado’s first March for Life rally were largely faith-based contingencies of women, men and children of all ages. Churches across the state bused congregation members to downtown Denver. Attendees represented their churches, religious