Tomorrow we’ll know whether the ballot initiative campaign to ban abortions at 22 weeks was successful in gathering enough signatures to put the question to Colorado voters in November.
Proponents have sounded confident that they’ll be able to meet the signature requirement by March 4, and today, local conservative activist Kristina Finley shared what appears to be a screenshot of an email from the campaign saying they’ve been successful.
“We have gathered enough minimum raw signatures to be able to submit — but we still need a cushion to account for any signatures deemed invalid,” the email states.
That doesn’t, however, leave much room for error, as the email points out.
The initiative makes exceptions for cases where an abortion is necessary to save the life of the patient, but not for rape, incest, or to preserve the patient’s health.
The initiative aims to change Colorado statute, rather than create an amendment. That lowers the bar for the number of signatures required to place it on the ballot.
If the campaign did successfully gather the 124,632 signatures required to make it on the ballot, voters could end Colorado’s status as a critical safe haven for access to later abortion care.
Colorado is one of only a handful of states that offer abortions at any stage of pregnancy. The initiative would specifically impact the Boulder Abortion Clinic, which specializes in serving patients from all over the world who chose to terminate a pregnancy after being diagnosed with fetal anomalies that might result in miscarriage, stillbirth, or a child that would die shortly after delivery.
