January 23, 2024 09:51 AM UTC

Turnout Heaven: Abortion Rights Headed For Your Ballot

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Colorado Newsline’s Sara Wilson reports, a coalition of reproductive rights groups kicked off their petition campaign to place an amendment on this November’s ballot to permanently guarantee abortion rights in Colorado’s state constitution, along with removing old language prohibiting public funds being used for abortion care:

Colorado already has strong abortion protections in place and is an island of protected care as surrounding states restrict access following the Dobbs v. Jackson decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

In 2022, Democratic lawmakers passed the Reproductive Health Equity Act to protect abortion in state statute. Last year, Democrats passed another package of bills to protect doctors who perform abortions on patients who travel from states with abortion bans, clamp down on clinics that offer so-called “abortion reversal” procedures, and require large employers to offer abortion coverage in their health care plans, with an exemption for public employees.

The proposed constitutional amendment, however, would lift a ban on public funds for abortions. That would mean the approximately 1 million people who work at public institutions like hospitals, universities and the Capitol itself would be able to use their work health insurance to pay for an abortion.

Colorado voters approved the public fund ban in 1984, when Amendment 3 passed with just 50.39% of the vote.

A constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights is the strongest possible law Colorado can pass on the issue, since a flipped legislature could overturn the state’s statutory protections in the future. Not many voters in 2024 are aware that Colorado passed a Hyde Amendment-style ban on public abortion funding in the 1980s, but the existence of that ban became an unexpected problem during the failed campaign in 2016 to pass a single-payer health care measure Amendment 69.

Politically, the opportunity for Colorado voters to turn out in their overwhelming usual numbers to support abortion rights is expected to be a huge benefit to Colorado Democrats, who are well accustomed to benefiting from liberal voters who have turned out in droves to vote down anti-abortion ballot measures (and candidates) over the past two decades. This election will be the first chance for Colorado voters to weigh in on abortion rights specifically since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down Roe v. Wade, and consistent with elections across the country since then, it’s going to have a powerful effect.

And yes, Colorado Republicans have paid the price on this issue as much as Democrats have benefited. In Colorado as nationally, Republicans are “the dog that caught the car” on abortion, having achieved their long-sought goal of ending the national right to abortion but now on the wrong side of a generation of settled public opinion.

At this point there is no reason to believe that Colorado Republicans will get out of the way of this electoral steamroller, or even try. It’s a fight they say they’re proud to lose, and Democrats should take them at their word.