Earlier this year, Gov. Polis signed the Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA) into law. This piece of legislation, which was co-led by local organizations like the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR) and Cobalt Advocates, guarantees having access to the full spectrum of reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion to ensure that people can control their own bodies, lives, and futures.
It technically happened while state Sen. Kevin Priola was a Republican, but those reading the Centennial Institute’s just-released legislative scorecard will recognize the Legislature’s newest Democrat as unique among the awardees.
At a Club 20 debate in Grand Junction on Saturday, Oak Creek Republican Savannah Wolfson, a candidate for House in Colorado’s high country, said the rollback of Roe v. Wade has no impact here and Colorado went too far in passing abortion-rights legislation.
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), alongside other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, introduced the Right to Contraception Act, a bill that will codify the constitutional right to contraception. The U.S Supreme Court has upheld this right more than half a century ago in Griswold v. Connecticut.
Yesterday morning, the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, chaired by US Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO), heard six testimonies from key-witnesses on the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson and its implications for the future of reproductive health care in the United States.
During a Colorado Springs campaign event in June, Republican candidate for Colorado Governor Heidi Ganahl said that individual states should decide if they want same-sex marriage and contraception to be legal.
In the wake of Colorado’s primary elections last week and the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and return abortion laws to state authority, Republicans and conservatives continue to push anti-abortion policy via legislation, ballot initiatives, campaign rhetoric, and leadership elections. Despite recent failures in enacting their agenda and a demonstrated lack of support from the state’s voters, the Colorado GOP is undeterred.
In the wake of the leaked Supreme Court opinion that likely indicates Roe v. Wade’s imminent demise, Colorado Democrats’ passage of the Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA) appears especially timely. Enshrining abortion access in state law won’t just protect Coloradans but residents of red states where officials have been champing at the bit for decades to ban abortion but for the federal protections of Roe.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Lopez appeared on Leland Conway’s radio show yesterday to discuss his interview with Kyle Clark of 9News. Lopez reiterated his position against abortion and Colorado’s Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA), which enshrines access to abortion under Colorado law, saying that victims of rape who become pregnant should “think of the long-term situation” instead of opting for abortion.
With this week’s revelation of a U.S. Supreme Court poised to overturn nearly 50 years of precedent in Roe v. Wade, states are bracing for new legislative battles over reproductive rights. That includes House District 26 and the majority of Eagle County.
