Earlier this month the Colorado Title Board set the title for Initiative 149, “Right to Life from Conception.” The initiative is the latest personhood effort from Angela Eicher and Faye Barnhart of Brush, who have consistently submitted anti-abortion ballot measures during election years. In recent years, Faye and Eicher’s measures have failed to gather enough signatures to make the ballot.
So-called “personhood” initiatives or bills, like Initiative 149, seek to confer legal rights on a fetus from the moment of conception. In 2023, Rep. Lauren Boebert (4-CO) supported House Resolution 464, which “acknowledging that unborn children are legal and constitutional persons who are entitled to the equal protection of the laws,” cites the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, claiming that it “situated its equal protection guarantee within a common-law and statutory context that prohibited abortion and treated the unborn human being throughout pregnancy as a ‘person,’ who under ‘common and civil law’ was ‘to all intents and purposes a child, as much as if born.’”
The use of the 14th Amendment in arguing for equal protection for fetuses has been a common feature of abortion abolition bills, which completely ban abortion and require criminal murder charges against abortion patients and providers. Abolition bills have been introduced in states across the country, including Colorado, and most recently in Alabama.
Initiative 149 will ask Colorado voters, “Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado Constitution creating new law that children have the right to continue living once conceived?”
In 2008 Colorado saw the nation’s first attempt at a “fetal personhood” ballot initiative with Amendment 48. The sponsor behind that measure was (then 21-year-old) Kristi Burton Brown, who built her political career on her anti-abortion stance. She has since served as Colorado Republican Party Chair and now works at conservative dark money group Advance Colorado. Amendment 48, and a 2010 attempt, Amendment 62, were both rejected by voters with over 70% of voters opposed, and did not receive a majority vote in any county in Colorado. Amendment 67, in 2014, was rejected by nearly 65% of voters, and 2020’s Proposition 115, which would have banned abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy, was defeated with 59% of the vote, after opponents spent $9.5 million to campaign against the measure. In 2022, an attempt to classify abortion as “murder” failed to gather enough signatures to even make it on the ballot.
Last year, presented for the first time with an opportunity to expand access to abortion care, Colorado voters approved Amendment 79, Right to Abortion, with nearly 62% of the vote, enshrining the protections of RHEA into the Colorado constitution and allowing for abortion coverage in health plans for public employees.
In addition to the string of failed personhood amendments, Colorado Republicans have consistently introduced doomed legislation to restrict abortion access in Colorado. In February, 2022, Democrats rejected three anti-abortion measures, and in 2023, bills to end abortion in Colorado, provide pain medication to fetuses during abortions, and provide information about abortion pill reversal were voted down.
While conservatives have failed in their efforts to restrict abortion, Colorado Democrats passed the Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA) in 2022, sweeping legislation that legalized abortion throughout the entirety of pregnancy.
“Colorado has become a state focused on death, and not only for residents of our state, but a sanctuary of killing babies for residents of other states,” said Rep. Brandi Bradley (R-Littleton) during the 2024 March for Life. “Sixty-six babies a day are aborted in our states. We have the most radical and the most extreme abortion laws in the country, including day-of-birth abortions. It’s appalling. We are not a pro-choice state. We are a pro-murder state.”
Earlier this year, Colorado legislators strengthened Colorado’s shield law, which protects abortion patients and providers from prosecution by states where abortion is illegal, and during the recent special session authorized state funding for Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health care providers removed from the federal Medicaid program by President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
“Health care shouldn’t be political,” said Rep. Jennifer Bacon (D-Denver) in an Aug. 26 news release. “The federal GOP budget bill targeted Planned Parenthood, threatening access to low-cost family planning and preventive care for all Coloradans in all corners of our state. All Coloradans, whether or not they are a Medicaid recipient, deserve access to reproductive health care. This new law is an effort to fight back against the largest cut to Medicaid in the history of our country and protect thousands of Coloradans from losing this essential health care coverage and access to the provider of their choice.”
Once Initiative 149 is approved for circulation, Eicher and Barnhart will have six months to collect 124,328 valid signatures from registered voters and submit them before the Aug. 3, 2026 deadline for the 2026 general election in November.
