On the radio last week State Rep. Rose Pugliese (R-Colorado Springs) continued to push her misleading claim that the new abortion bills passed this session allow children as young as 10 to get an abortion without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Her argument is disingenuous for two reasons. First, a 10 or 12 year-old girl isn’t allowed to “make medical decisions for herself.” Even if the parents aren’t notified, a judge must be convinced to grant permission before anything can happen. Second, the bill that prompted Pugliese’s non sequitur of an objection has nothing to do with parental notification, and she was informed of that immediately, during the bill’s debate on the House floor.
Pugliese, who describes herself as “pro-life with no exceptions,” is in her first session at the state legislature, but as her Assistant Minority Leader title indicates, she’s no ordinary rookie. She’s an attorney who previously served eight years as a Mesa County Commissioner and was at one point last year widely considered to be her party’s preferred Secretary of State candidate.
Pugliese’s radio rant was at least the third time she has made this argument publicly. The first time was on March 31, during the floor debate over SB23-189, a bill that expands access to various aspects of reproductive health care, but does not address parental notification of minors seeking abortion care. Nevertheless Pugliese asked if the bill would allow her 12 year-old daughter to get an abortion with her knowledge. It doesn’t address parental notification because Colorado already has a law in place on that issue — it’s been on the books for twenty years.
The Colorado Parental Notification Act was passed by the Colorado Legislature in 2003. The law requires doctors or healthcare providers to notify a parent or guardian of a minor’s scheduled abortion procedure. Exceptions to the notification rule include the minors who have obtained a judicial bypass of the parental notification requirement, medical emergency, or those who are legally emancipated.
Following her question, Pugliese appeared to understand her fellow legislators’ explanation that the bill up for debate did not address abortion notification.
Just two weeks later, however, she wrote an opinion column for the Gazette in which she repeated and expounded upon her misinformation.
“Democrats avoided stating directly that my 12-year-old can get an abortion without my knowledge and consent, but that is what the bill allows. “
To be clear, there is a narrow exception to the decades-old parental notification act that allows for a judge to grant a minor access to abortion care without a parent’s knowledge. It’s called a judicial bypass and it exists for very real reasons which are almost always awful. Why can’t a child tell her parents about getting an abortion? Typically it’s because that child is a victim of incest or sexual assault by a partner of her parent. Thankfully it’s exceedingly rare. According to five years of state data (2017-2021), only eight 12 year-olds in Colorado had abortions and that includes those who did so with their parents’ knowledge.
Pugliese’s radio interview with Steffan Tubbs last week gave her another opportunity to conflate the three new abortion bills with longstanding Colorado law.
Pugliese: We need to go door-to-door, talking to our friends and neighbors and say do you know that this is happening… The weekend after the abortion bills… I was talking to some friends and I was talking about how down I was, about how 12 year-olds now in Colorado can get an abortion without the knowledge and consent of their parents. I was talking about my daughter that has some medical issues that are rare, very rare, and that she, at 12 years old, cannot make medical decisions for herself. But what you hear is a lot of hypocrisy, right? The brain is not properly formed to own a gun, but is properly formed at 12 years old to make medical decisions. “…It doesn’t matter where you stand on this issue. Nobody thinks it’s okay for 12 year-olds to have an abortion without their parent’s knowledge or consent. Like nobody thinks that’s okay. And yet we’re doing it in Colorado. This is too extreme for Colorado. And it is up to us to talk to all of our friends and neighbors, not just our political bubbles, but get outside of that and talk to all of our friends and neighbors and make sure they’re spreading the word as to what’s happening in Colorado.”
Tubbs: Back to the 12 year-old getting an abortion without parental consent- how was 12 years old decided?
Rose Pugliese: It’s a minor, which is anyone under 18. I like to say 12 year olds because I’ve got an almost 12 year old. But technically, if a ten year old is capable. Even a ten year-old could do it.”
Again, Pugliese is deceptively using a decades-old law that allows child victims of rape and incest to get abortions without endangering their lives, to attack a new law that doesn’t address the issue at all, and doing so in a way that implies the new bill created the longstanding law, which it didn’t.
Pugliese did not respond to emailed question seeking clarification as to why she continues to raise a policy that isn’t in the bill she opposes and whether or not she objects to the reasoning behind the well-established notification exception of a judicial bypass.
Laura Chapin, a spokeswoman for the Cobalt Abortion Fund, expressed disappointment in the legislator’s repeated statements.
“Rep. Pugliese is misrepresenting both current Colorado law and what these bills actually do,” said Chapin. “As an attorney and a public official, she knows better and she should not do that.”
