State’s landmark abortion law was OKd 50 years ago
DENVER — Tuesday marks 50 years since a groundbreaking Colorado law significantly loosened tight restrictions on legal abortions.
Before the law, Colorado — like many states — allowed abortions only if a woman’s life was at stake.
In 1967, a Democratic freshman state lawmaker introduced a bill that allowed abortions if the woman’s physical or mental health was threatened, if the unborn child might have birth defects or in cases of rape or incest.
Rep. Richard Lamm said he feared he might be committing political suicide by introducing the bill to the overwhelmingly male, Republicandominated Legislature.
But within weeks, Republican Gov. John Love signed the bill into law, making Colorado the first state to loosen restrictions on abortion — six years before the U.S. Supreme Court would legalize it nationally.
“I was pushing on a half-open door. It gave way so much more easily than I ever dreamed it would,” recalled Lamm, now 81.
But all abortions still had to be approved by three-doctor panels at participating hospitals and were only permitted during the first 16 weeks of pregnancy.
Instead of ending his newfound political career, Lamm went on to serve three terms as the state’s governor. He is now the co-director of the University of Denver’s Institute of Public Policy Studies.
Lamm said recently that when he introduced the legislation, the women’s movement was just starting to take off and the concept that citizens should have more personal freedom was becoming more important in society.
At the time, abortion was not one of the Colorado Republican Party’s most pressing issues and there was no organized opposition in the state to abortion rights because the idea was so new, Lamm said.
Key to Lamm’s effort was ally Ruth Steel, an activist who had lobbied lawmakers in 1965 to allow public health officials to discuss and to provide birth control with residents. She worked closely with John Bermingham, a Republican state senator who is now 93 and retired, to shepherd the contraception bill though the Legislature.
While on lobbying trips to the Capitol, Steel dressed formally, wearing a hat and gloves, but had no qualms talking to lawmakers frankly about issues related to sex, Lamm said.
A woman in charge of proofreading bills in the basement of the Capitol was essential to advancing the bill through the Legislature, Bermingham said.
Bermingham learned that she supported the bill, and he asked her to wait until a Senate leader who opposed it would be away so the bill could be introduced without being assigned to a committee seen as sure to kill it.
Eleven other states followed suit. And four more lifted all abortion restrictions — New York, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska — before 1970. The 1973 Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide.