The Colorado House passed four bills this week aimed at protecting access to abortion and cross-sex surgery and hormones despite efforts from Republicans to stall voting until July 4, when the session would be finished.
As Live Action News previously reported, Senate Bill 183 would update the state’s current law to align with Amendment 79, which was approved by Colorado voters in November and enshrined abortion as a ‘right’ in the state Constitution. The bill also allows the state taxpayer funding of abortions for state employees as well as residents using Medicaid. The bill awaits the signature of Governor Jared Polis.
Senate Bill 129 would expand Colorado’s shield law, protecting doctors who prescribe the abortion pill by allowing them to list only their offices — not their own names — on those prescriptions. The bill states, “Current law requires a prescription drug label to include the name of the prescribing practitioner. At the practitioner’s request, the bill authorizes a prescription label for mifepristone, misoprostol, and the generic alternatives to those prescriptions to include only the names of the prescribing health-care practice instead of the name of the practitioner…”
Similar bills have been passed in other states in an attempt to make it more difficult for abortionists to be held accountable when mailing abortion pills to women in pro-life states where they are illegal.
The bill also prohibits Colorado residents, organizations, and businesses from complying with out-of-state legal requests seeking information on those who may be involved in “legally-protected health-care activity” such as abortion, in addition to things like cross-sex surgery or cross-sex hormones. Senate Bill 129 will return to the state Senate to reapprove the bill with the amendments made by the House.
“We have worked hard in Colorado to protect the freedom to decide what to do with our futures and our bodies, and we won’t allow anyone to put these freedoms in danger,” said state Sen. Lisa Cutter (D), co-sponsor of the bill. “As attacks on reproductive rights continue across the country, we are working to implement strong and responsive laws in Colorado to shield health care patients and providers from hostile out-of-state action.”
Two other bills, House Bill 1309 and House Bill 1312, were passed by the House and pertain to so-called “gender-affirming care.” HB 1309 protects cross-sex surgery and hormones, seeking to block insurance companies from denying or limiting coverage for such interventions when a doctor prescribes them. This bill now heads to the Colorado Senate.
HB 1312 has garnered attention for its draconian attempt to usurp parental rights and dictate their speech, otherwise they risk being labeled as child abusers. The bill prohibits “deadnaming” and “misgendering,” forcing parents to refer to their children by their selected gender/name instead of by their biological sex or given name at birth; violations could result in loss of custody.
Section 2 of the bill states that “when making child custody decisions and determining the best interests of a child for purposes of parenting time, a court shall consider deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual’s gender-affirming health-care services as types of coercive control. A court shall consider reports of coercive control when determining the allocation of parental responsibilities in accordance with the best interests of the child.”
