This week Colorado’s House Education Committee will hear a new bill to expand access to medication abortion on college campuses. Sponsored by Rep. Lorena Garcia (D-Denver), Rep. Kenny Nguyen (D-Broomfield) and Sen. Katie Wallace (D-Longmont), House Bill 1335 would require colleges that operate a student health center to provide on-site abortion medication services, require those colleges pharmacies to maintain a stock of abortion medication or submit a prescription for abortion medication to a pharmacy located off-campus. The bill does have an exemption for colleges with “bona fide religious beliefs or practices.”
New Era Colorado, the nonprofit advocacy group focused on college-aged voters, teamed up with Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains to introduce this legislation. “When we came together with Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, what we have noticed is that many students living on college campuses are often far away from their previous providers,” said Kiyana Newell, New Era’s policy and research director. “Usually they have childhood pediatricians and must rely on campus health centers for a range of services, including sexual and reproductive healthcare. We just knew that when students can’t obtain the care that they need on campus, they must travel — sometimes missing class and work and taking on those additional costs. We know that these burdens fall hardest on first generation college students, students of color, undocumented students, and students from families with low income. We just know that it was just time right to make sure that students can receive medication abortions on college campuses.”
Medication abortions consist of two medications — mifepristone, which blocks the body’s production of progesterone, stopping the pregnancy from progressing, and misoprostol, which causes the uterus to expel the aborted material. Unlike surgical abortion, medication abortion can be managed at home, and in 2021 The Food and Drug Administration permanently ended the requirement for in-person visits for medication abortion, allowing patients in all but 18 states to receive medication abortions via telehealth visits.
Colorado’s effort to expand medication abortion comes as Republicans have designated the practice as their new target following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision. In recent years, activists have attempted to use the 1873 Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of “obscene” material, to ban abortion at a municipal level in states like Texas and New Mexico. Efforts to use Comstock to prevent an abortion clinic from operating in Pueblo failed twice in recent years. In 2024, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s legal effort to challenge FDA approval of mifepristone failed, but anti-abortion activists continue to consider novel ways to bring about legislative action.
“Over the last couple years, Kristen [Hawkins, president of Students for Life America] thought, ‘Okay, with chemical abortion, we need to be creative about this,’” explained Savanna Deterich, the government affairs coordinator for Students for Life Action during this year’s National Pro-Life Summit in Washington D.C. “How are we going to address chemical abortion? Because it is a cartel that is running rampant. There’s no testing online. They’re not testing online distribution of these pills, and we’re like, ‘What is happening with these babies?’ They’re infused with Mifepristone. What is happening to our waterways? We are basically drinking people’s abortions and these drugs. We are gonna come out with a white paper soon that is testing the waters and it shows that it is in our water and it’s passed [on to consumers].”
Last month, U.S. Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) introduced a federal version of Students for Life’s legislation entitled the “Clean Water for All Life Act.” Co-sponsors included Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
“The murder-for-profit abortion industry has completely ignored the dangerous and unethical disposal of pre-born baby remains and toxic chemical waste produced by abortion pills,” said Miller in a March 18 news release. “I introduced the Clean Water for All Life Act to put an end to their reckless and inhumane practices.”
The bill would make it illegal to flush abortion or miscarriage remains down a toilet and would require pregnant women using abortion pills to use “catch kits” when ending their pregnancy. Last year Wisconsin introduced a state-level version of the bill.
“This bill imposes additional burdens on both patients and physicians by requiring follow-up visits and strict disposal protocols for abortion-inducing drugs, effectively criminalizing minor errors with penalties already carrying felony consequences,” noted the ACLU of Wisconsin. “It also shifts heavy regulatory responsibility onto manufacturers, exposing them to costly environmental fines under the “spills law” for any contamination of ‘endocrine disruptors.’”
Students for Life boasts over 1,500 campus groups across the U.S., including in Colorado. The hearing for HB 1335 is April 16.
