Colorado voters have an opportunity this fall to guarantee reproductive freedom in the state Constitution, and also to finally make certain that this liberty doesn’t just pertain to affluent women with private health insurance. We urge people to vote “yes” on Amendment 79.
This amendment is needed to repeal another constitutional amendment passed by Colorado voters 40 years ago that prohibits taxpayer money, including Medicaid, from being used to pay for abortions. Striking section 50 of article V of the Colorado Constitution would provide equitable health care in this state for the thousands of women on Medicaid. Without insurance coverage, women must find a free clinic or save enough money to obtain a safe abortion in a timely manner.
Colorado clinics have waiting lists for abortion care because this state is pulling women from places across the nation where Republicans have banned abortions. So instead of having an abortion at, say, six weeks gestation performed by her own OBGYN, a woman would be forced to wait two or three more weeks to go to a clinic.
Nothing about that is good for Coloradans, including the blastocyst that is rapidly developing into an embryo and by nine weeks gestation will become a fetus.
We trust women to judge their own personal circumstances and make this decision for themselves. We are resolute that abortions be conducted at the earliest possible moment in gestation. Amendment 79 would make certain that women who choose to have an abortion can do so quickly, with Medicaid coverage, and with their own doctors.
But Amendment 79 is also about protecting Colorado’s status as one of the few remaining safe havens for pregnant women in a post-Roe v. Wade world where 13 states have religiously framed laws banning abortions from the moment an egg is fertilized.
Opponents of Amendment 79 want to make the issue about the regulation of late-term abortions.
Thomas Perille, a doctor with Democrats for Life, told The Denver Post that he fears if Amendment 79 becomes law this state will never be able to regulate abortion clinics, including prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks gestation that are “elective” and providing similar licensing and review processes as other hospital clinics and outpatient surgery centers.
But the language of Amendment 79 would not prohibit all future regulation of abortion. We know that the most basic constitutional rights can and should have reasonable restrictions placed on them. We have freedom of religion until a cult begins harming people. We have the right to bear arms but not machine guns. We have free speech unless it’s a vicious lie that harms someone’s reputation. Even before five conservative Supreme Court justices stripped pregnant women of their constitutional protections, abortion was heavily regulated across much of the nation at all points of gestation.
If Amendment 79 passes, Coloradans will have the right to have an abortion but lawmakers can ensure those abortions are safe and conducted within the medical best practices recommended by the state’s Board of Health.
Perille cites data from 2014 released by an abortion clinic in Boulder that says over the course of five years, only 30% of abortions were prompted by a fetal diagnosis. He’s attempting to scare Coloradans into believing that women and doctors are regularly seeking and performing late-term abortions on perfectly healthy babies.
We know that is not the case.
The study itself is focused on second- and third-trimester abortions, but the reference to 30% of abortions being for a fetal diagnosis is referring to all of the abortions — not just abortions after 12 weeks gestation — at the facility in the five-year period, 1,251 patients, as evidenced by the note that the increase in the percent of abortions done for fetal anomalies “reflected a gradual change in clinic policy to accept patients with more advanced gestation.” Clearly, the more patients served later in pregnancy the higher percent of abortions were performed due to fetal anomalies because the two are closely correlated. Today that clinic does not provide first-term abortions but at the time of the study it did.
Only 1% of abortions are performed after 21 weeks of gestation according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and there’s no data to show how many of those are performed absent a fetal anomaly or concerns for the mother’s health. Doctors do talk about a small number of abortions later in pregnancy in instances of rape, incest, and sex trafficking.
We know that the No. 1 way to prevent abortions from being needed in the second trimester is to make access to care faster. Fewer Colorado women will need to find a clinic at 12 weeks gestation if their own OBGYN can treat them using Medicaid dollars at nine weeks gestation.
Coloradans have a chance to undo years of harmful public policy and make abortions a part of regular health care. It takes 55% of voters to change the state Constitution, so please, don’t skip over Amendment 79 on the ballots that arrive in mailboxes starting Monday.
Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.
