July 13, 2026 10:15 AM UTC

Planned Parenthood PAC to Spend ‘Six-Figures’ in Effort to Oust Evans

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• by: Sean Beedle

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Originally posted at the Colorado Times Recorder

This week, Planned Parenthood Votes, an independent expenditure committee focused on reproductive justice, announced the launch of their “We Decide” electoral campaign to unseat lawmakers who voted to defund Planned Parenthood. The group will spend $47 million to flip federal House and Senate seats and to support various state-level races. Among the federal races targeted by Planned Parenthood Votes is Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, where U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO) is facing a challenge from Colorado Rep. Manny Rutinel (D-Commerce City). In 2024 Evans beat former U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D-CO) by roughly 2,500 votes.

Planned Parenthood Votes’ involvement in the 2026 midterm elections is a direct result of Republican efforts to ban federal funding in the form of Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood. The ban went into effect as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, but Senate rules prevented the ban from lasting longer than one calendar year. On July 4, the ban Medicaid reimbursements expired.

“The goal right now is to take back our right to decide our lives, our futures — state by state — and Colorado has a really important role to play because we need to make sure that voters understand and know who to blame for the abortion bans and the attack on reproductive health care that endangers their health, and who to blame for closing the health centers that they rely on for care,” said Sarah Standiford, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes. “We’ll do a large six-figure investment in Colorado. I think the exact amount will be determined in part by the mechanics of the race as it proceeds, but we very much need voters to understand that Gabe Evans and the anti-abortion Republicans in Congress launched a full-throttle attack on Planned Parenthood and the high quality, affordable care that we provide last year when they passed the big horrible bill.”

In Colorado, Democrats passed legislation to allow general fund dollars to make up for the lack of federal funding, but other states were severely impacted by the cuts. “When the defunding happened last cycle, it meant that patients lost life-saving, affordable health care,” said Standiford. “You have communities that lost trusted providers … People were irreparably harmed. It’s patients who bore the cost of that political motivation, and that’s despite the Herculean effort of local Planned Parenthood organizations and great champions in Colorado who have done everything to expand access to care. In states that did not make emergency funds available to cover the cost for Medicaid patients, or in states where there were even further losses of health center provision, that is a health care ecosystem crisis and that is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the ‘defunding of Planned Parenthood.’”

Last year, Evans took personal responsibility for the passage of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. On right-wing KHOW radio, Evans went so far as to boast that his congressional seat, which flipped from Democrat to Republican in 2024, has enabled Republicans to enact “all of the reforms that we’re doing” and gave Republicans the “platform to be able to highlight Democrats’ absolutely disastrous and insane policies that are raising costs and making life more dangerous and more difficult for everyday Coloradans.” As an example, Evans told KHOW that he was “100%” of the majority that passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, the first version of which passed by a single vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Making sure that voters understand that Evans voted to defund Planned Parenthood and block patients from care, forcing those two health centers to close — that is something that he needs to be accountable for,” said Standiford. “The fact that he doesn’t care that his agenda is wildly unpopular with the Coloradans needs to be communicated. We’ll be doing that — through mail, through phones, through paid communications, all directly from Planned Parenthood Votes.”

In 2024, Rutinel sponsored a resolution urging voters to support the ballot initiative that would become Amendment 79, which enshrined the right to an abortion under the Colorado Constitution, and to designate Jan. 22 as Roe v. Wade Day. During his 2024 campaign, Evans was endorsed by a host of prominent anti-abortion legislators and activists.

“Because the defund provision just expired on July 4, we have an opportunity now to elect people to prevent that from ever happening again,” said Standiford. “That’s our job — to make sure that folks who voted against access to healthcare lose their jobs.”