After more than 29 hours of often tense and emotional debate over three days, Colorado lawmakers passed Democrats’ three priority abortion and gender-affirming-care bills Saturday night.
The bills approved by the Colorado House place tighter regulations upon the advertising and unproven scientific claims of crisis-pregnancy centers, codify protections for providers of abortion- and gender-affirming care, and extend insurance coverage to abortion and other reproductive health-related treatment.
They represent the latest steps in Democrats’ ongoing efforts to enshrine and expand abortion access in state law amid the national fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June, a push that began last year and is set to continue with a ballot measure in November 2024.
“I’m so glad we were able to deliver on the promise of (the Reproductive Health Equity Act),” said Rep. Meg Froelich, a Greenwood Village Democrat, of the bills’ passage. “The new patchwork of laws across the U.S. is confusing and dangerous. Our fundamental rights have been reaffirmed, established and tested in Colorado.”
That includes making sure patients and providers are protected, ensuring access and affordability to health care and removing barriers to that care because of “biased counseling,” she said. “It was a lot — three bills and many days of debate. But the threats are real, and there is an urgency now due to the landscape.”
The passage of the package — barring reconciliations with the Senate, which first passed the bills, is on a path to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk — comes less than a year after the General Assembly muscled the Reproductive Health Equity Act past a 24-hour Republican filibuster. The law guarantees the right to abortions in Colorado. To avoid similar obstructionism this time around, House Democrats took the unusual step on Thursday and Friday to limit debate on the three reproductive health bills to a total of 20 hours.
Democratic leaders said the limitations — which, before last weekend’s gun debates, hadn’t been imposed in the House in recent memory — were necessary to allow for sufficient debate and to keep the House’s calendar humming. Democrats’ decision to limit debate repeatedly this year is a sign, their members said, of Republicans’ inability to follow through on deals struck with Democratic leadership, as well as a nod to the depth of the disagreement between lawmakers on either side on abortion and gender-affirming care.
Abortion and gender-affirming care are foundational issues for both parties, particularly in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last year reversing abortion rights and the development of anti-abortion and transgender laws that have taken hold across the country. The debate on the package, which stretched across three days beginning late Thursday morning, turned at times from respectful and technical to emotional and super-charged. Democrats described the bills as vital to protecting Colorado’s pregnant people and families and further solidifying the state’s place as an abortion haven.
The first of the bills passed Saturday, SB23-190, prohibits the use of “deceptive advertising” by crisis pregnancy centers and designates offering so-called abortion reversal medication as “unprofessional conduct.” That vote was followed by discussion of SB23-188, which prevents the state from recognizing or engaging in any criminal prosecutions or lawsuits for anyone who receives, provides or assists in abortions and gender-affirming care. The last was SB23-189, which requires insurance to cover reproductive health care, including the full cost of abortions and sterilizations, and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.
Republicans decried the proposed regulations against crisis-pregnancy centers — which are often faith-based and advertise unproven medical treatments — as anti-Christian and an affront to people who want abortion alternatives. Some gave graphic descriptions of abortion procedures, and, at one point, GOP Rep. Scott Bottoms of Colorado Springs surreptitiously held up an image of a baby from the House floor. They cast several of the bills — related to gender-affirming care and access to contraception — as infringements on parental rights, which Democrats called misinformed.
Other arguments were more technical: Republican leaders Reps. Mike Lynch of Wellington and Rose Pugliese of El Paso County told reporters Thursday afternoon that nonpartisan Capitol lawyers had determined SB23-188 — which protects abortion and gender-affirming care — was composed in such a way as to be unconstitutional and would need to be amended significantly.
Democratic sponsors Froelich and Rep. Brianna Titone of Arvada told The Denver Post they were aware of the issue and were unconcerned. (They would later pass a relatively minor amendment Friday). Still, Republican lawmakers argued Saturday that the bill remained unconstitutional.
Lawmakers supporting the measure spoke about their own pregnancies, sexual assaults, abortion care and parenting transgender children while Republicans shared stories of miscarriages and adoption. After Colorado Springs GOP Rep. Ken DeGraaf said Friday that most pregnancies are “self-inflicted injuries” that thus didn’t warrant specific insurance protections, Democratic Rep. Jenny Willford responded by describing her own sexual assault and subsequent pregnancy scare. That, the Northglenn representative said, wasn’t “self-inflicted.”
After DeGraaf then emphasized that “99.5%” of pregnancies were self-inflicted, Willford and a number of other female Democratic lawmakers stood in front of him with their arms crossed. The tensions rose to the point that a sergeant-at-arms — a House staff member who enforces rules and order in the chamber — moved to within 5 feet of the podium. Rep. Richard Holtorf, the Republicans’ whip, crossed to the Democratic side and spoke with lawmakers there in a bid to calm tensions. When DeGraaf rose to speak again, Froelich shook her head in his direction.
Lawmakers and officials on both sides of the aisle had worried about the tone of the debate in the days leading up to it, particularly on the bill related to gender-affirming care. In early March, House Republicans had turned a symbolic vote on the Equal Rights Amendment into a criticism of transgender people, prompting Titone — Colorado’s only openly transgender lawmaker — to rebuke them and remind them that she was their equal.
On Friday, Republicans had focused part of the debate on gender-affirming care for minors and cast treatment as experimental and harmful (medical experts say gender-affirming care is critical for trans youths’ well-being). Holtorf, of Akron, spoke at length about the issue from the House floor and said he supported a prohibition on gender-affirming “procedures” for minors (such procedures are rare; according to Reuters, fewer than 300 minors received gender-affirming breast surgery in 2021).
That prompted Titone to respond, calling Holtorf’s view narrow “and lacks empathy whatsoever,” and she questioned why anyone would choose to be transgender, given the discrimination they face.
“Why would you want to be that? Why would you want to be a trans person when the governments are telling you you can’t play sports, that you can’t be yourself?” Titone said. “Why would anybody want that? Nobody would want that.”
Although Colorado Springs Democratic Rep. Stephanie Vigil thanked Republicans who used more inclusive language on Saturday, she reprimanded other comments, saying, “I just want to be absolutely clear that some of the false remarks from this well about the grooming supposedly going on is extremely dangerous rhetoric. … The repeated absolutely false accusation that transgender people and families of trans kids are committing that heinous offense is beyond cruel.”
Similarly, Rep. Elisabeth Epps of Denver took to the podium Saturday to address Bottoms’ comments from earlier in the week when he said, “What’s sadly ironic is a 52 year-old white man is up here trying to defend babies. Little Black babies, little Hispanic babies, little white babies.”
Epps said the “claim that a white man must be the savior of Black babies” was a “reprehensible assertion” and she condemned the use of Black fetus dolls — some Republican lawmakers have been placing these Black, brown or white dolls on their desks for months, sometimes in small tins with cloth underneath.
“Using Black babies — Black babies who arrive into a world that criminalizes them, that does not sufficiently support their nutrition, their child care for their parents, their education, their health care — using Black babies, and indeed Black bodies who bring us Black babies, as rhetorical devices in discussion of (SB) 190, what it’s doing is it’s really commenting about Black parents, suggesting that Black parents aren’t enough, aren’t competent enough to make decisions about our own bodies, about when we are to become parents,” she said.
Despite Republican leaders decrying the limitations on debate in a Thursday morning news conference, they ultimately left time on the clock Friday. Leaders from both parties cut a deal to end debate by 9 p.m. Friday, giving enough time for a vote that night, in exchange for a day off — the first in nearly two weeks — Sunday.
Attempts by Republican lawmakers on Saturday to refer bills back to second reading or committee for third readings were rejected. They spent nearly 10 hours debating the three bills on third reading Saturday, reiterating many of the same arguments from earlier in the week. GOP lawmakers stressed that they were not only representing their own opposition but that of their constituents, including fighting against insurance coverage for abortions.
“We worked on three bills, put inordinate amount of time … I want the record to reflect that my caucus came here and stood for three days to fight for life, to fight for parental rights and to fight for good governance,” Lynch said before the final vote. “I don’t think we got any of those out of any of the negotiations.”
Democrats had the votes to pass the package of bills, and Epps, a sponsor of the deceptive trade practices bill, said, “while Colorado is already a very special place, it’s going to be an even better place because at a time when our rights and our bodies are under such attack, we’ll continue to be a beacon.”
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