Colorado Legislature Passes Radical Bill for Unlimited Abortions Up to Birth

State   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Mar 23, 2022   |   3:47PM   |   Denver, Colorado

The Colorado legislature has passed a radical pro-abortion bill that would deny all rights and protections to babies prior to birth.

State Senate Republicans fought against pro-abortion House Bill 1279 in a 14-hour debate Tuesday, but they did not have enough votes to block bill. Democrats control the state legislature by a strong majority, and Gov. Jared Polis says he supports the legislation.

The state House approved the bill last week. Today, the Colorado Senate gave its final approval to the legislation.

The bill would make abortion a “fundamental right” under state law and deny rights and legal protections to any “fertilized egg, embryo or fetus” up to birth. It also would stop cities and municipalities from banning abortions through local ordinances such as others have done through the Sanctuary City for the Unborn movement.

One amendment that Democrats rejected simply would have required abortion facilities to sterilize equipment, said Colorado GOP Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown.

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“The @coloradodems are so anti-woman that they just voted down an amendment to require abortion clinics to have sterile equipment. You can’t make this insanity up,” Brown wrote on Twitter.

Brown praised pro-life lawmakers for fighting against the bill for 14 hours even though they did not have the votes to stop it.

“I could not be more proud of our Republican Senators … fighting to stop the nation’s most radical abortion bill,” she said.

Prior to the vote, state Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert, R-Douglas County, lamented that Republican lawmakers could not stop the radical pro-abortion bill without Democrats’ support.

“Senate Republicans are united in opposition to this bill, and we will work as hard as we can to defeat it …” he said. “However, we cannot stop this bill without support from the Democratic majority.”

Many lawmakers brought up their faith as they implored Democrats to recognize unborn babies’ right to life, but one Democrats responded by claiming he supports abortion because of his Christian faith.

Here’s more from Colorado Politics:

This will be an unusual debate, Sen. Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, [said]. Normally, lawmakers take on more practical matters, Lundeen said, but Tuesday’s debate is about life and death. He was also the first, but far from the last, to cite the Bible as reason for supporting or opposing the bill.

Rep. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, stated later in the day that people told him they hoped his faith — he holds a master’s degree in divinity from Harvard — would guide him.

“It does,” Bridges said, adding he learned that Christians, even members of the clergy, have vastly different views on almost everything, including abortion.

Earlier in the week, Catholic Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver testified against the bill in a Senate committee hearing, saying the duty of the government is to “protect life.”

“We take the gift of life seriously because each human being is a unique creation of God the Father,” Aquila said. “… The government’s only duty and task is to recognize the right to life and to protect life, if it is truly a just government.”

He urged lawmakers to recognize that every unborn baby is a gift, and every abortion destroys the life of a “unique, unrepeatable, and beautiful” human being.

Many pro-life advocates also expressed outrage that the bill would get rid of one of the few abortion regulations the state has: its parental notification law for minors.

According to the Colorado Catholic Conference, the bill would:

  • Allow on-demand abortion for the full 40 weeks of pregnancy;
  • Allow abortion discrimination based on sex, race, or disability;
  • Could remove the parent notification requirement if their minor has an abortion;
  • Enshrine in law that “a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under” state law;
  • Prohibit regulation of abortion based on the health of the woman or her baby.

Colorado is very liberal politically, and pro-life advocates have had a difficult time passing any pro-life laws there. Even fetal homicide laws to punish criminals who kill unborn babies in situations unrelated to abortion have been rejected repeatedly by the state legislature.

It is one of the few states with no limits on abortions, and abortionists there openly advertise abortions in the third trimester. In 2020, state voters rejected a ballot measure that would have protected viable, pain-capable unborn babies by banning late-term abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy.

ACTION ALERT: Contact Colorado state senators to express your disagreement.