Last Friday, Samuel J. Aquila, the archbishop of Denver, issued a statement urging Catholics to vote against proposed Amendment 79 which would enshrine a right to abortion into Colorado’s state constitution.
“This proposition does three things contrary to the dignity of the human person: it creates a constitutional right to unrestricted abortion for all 40 weeks of pregnancy, eliminates parental notification laws, and allows for taxpayer funding for abortions, which is currently prohibited,” Aquilla wrote in his statement.
Aquila added that “the pro-abortion lobby abused heartbroken mothers and families to advance their cause, claiming that medical care after a miscarriage or when an unborn child dies in the womb is equivalent to an abortion… Abortion is never health care; health care does not seek the death of a child.”
Archbishop Aquila has served as the head of the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver since he was named to the position in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI.
The vast majority of health professionals consider miscarriages and the death of a fetus as “abortions.” The World Health Organization defines comprehensive abortion care as including “care related to miscarriages (spontaneous abortion and missed abortion), induced abortion, and complete abortion as well as intrauterine fetal demise.”
The Archbishop honed in on the amendment’s phrase “shall not impede” on the right to abortion which he claims would nullify existing parental notification laws. “Parents must have the right to know if their adolescent daughter is being pressured into getting an abortion by their boyfriend or someone in authority such as their coach, teacher, school nurse or counselor.”
Aquila further decried the amendment’s proposed repeal of a section of the Colorado constitution added in 1984, Amendment 3, that bans public funding for abortion services.
The amendment has been spearheaded by a coalition of organizations going by Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom. In a virtual press briefing where the coalition’s co-chairs released a new ad for the campaign, the heads of two of those organizations responded to the Archbishop’s statement.
“This is a false narrative. First of all, the medical care people receive if they need to terminate a pregnancy or manage a miscarriage — the medical procedures are the same,” said Karen Middleton, President of the Cobalt Foundation and a former member of the Colorado State Board of Education. “What we are seeing is that in states where they have banned abortion care is that people cannot get care for miscarriage management or abortion because doctors are afraid to be put in jail for providing the care they know their patients need. This is a false statement, abortion is part of health care, and training to take care of a person is an important baseline activity.”
Dusti Gurule, the president and CEO of COLOR (Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights) and campaign co-chair added: “In the Colorado Latino Policy Agenda, we get a pretty realistic demographic swath of our community in our polls. A large proportion are Latino Catholics who consider themselves conservative and even Latino Catholics still overwhelmingly support the decisions people make for themselves and their bodies. When we talk to people in our communities about the needs they have, when it comes to abortion they support that people should have the ability to make that decision for themselves.”
The measure points out the 1984 language bans public funding for abortion services going to Medicaid and health insurance plans that are offered to local and state government employees. The language of Amendment 3 effectively denies health insurance coverage of services of state and local public employees seeking abortion even in cases of rape, incest, when a pregnancy threatens the health of a woman, or when there is a fatal fetal condition.
As it currently stands, the insurance coverage affects over 30,000 state employees, 59,899 K-12 teachers and principals, and 1,726,651 Medicaid enrollees. Combined that is over thirty percent of Colorado’s population that currently lack coverage for abortion-related healthcare.
“I was disappointed to read the comments from the Archbishop of Denver regarding the amendment. As a community figurehead with a position of influence and power, his spreading of misinformation is concerning, cruel, and frankly, dangerous,” said Dr. Sarah Peterson of the Colorado chapter of the American College of Obstetrician Gynecologists. “His comments are from someone who does not have medical knowledge or understanding of the complexities of pregnancy. These comments disregard that women are capable of making decisions that are right for them and their families, and that these decisions may include abortion care. I am a practicing obstetrician/ gynecologist and abortion care provider who cares for pregnant people through the many difficult decisions they are faced with, so I see firsthand every day that abortion is an essential part of healthcare and is often life-saving and life-changing. Amendment 79 would prioritize women having the right to be the ultimate decision makers in their healthcare and with their bodies. We’re living in a time where a few peoples’ personal beliefs are putting women at risk in some of the most serious moments in her life — we need to all remember that women are capable and are the best decision-makers in their own lives. Using disparaging language about what is and is not abortion is an attempt to force one’s bias onto those women, whose decisions need only reflect their health, their lives, and their values.”
Colorado’s Catholic leadership has thrown its political weight behind anti-choice ballot initiatives in the past. Notably, the church took an active role in an unsuccessful 2020 campaign that would have banned abortion at 22 weeks. In addition to this, the Colorado Catholic Conference came out against another proposed constitutional amendment that would recognize same-sex marriage and backed several initiatives that targeted transgender youth in the state.
This isn’t the first time Aquila has inserted the Archdiocese into Colorado politics either. The Archbishop wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in 2022 where he claimed it was ‘an act of charity’ to tell members of the LGBTQ+ community that they ‘don’t conform to nature’. Aquila has previously advocated for conversion therapy and urged Catholic schools not to enroll trans or nonbinary students.
