Colorado abortion bill illustrates growing polarization in politics
Democrats at the state Legislature made a remarkable choice in recent weeks to burnish their “reproductive rights” bona fides by passing a bill that stakes out perhaps the most extreme position possible on abortion by explicitly depriving an unborn child of any legal rights whatsoever until the moment after birth.
A premature over-reaction to fears that the U.S. Supreme Court may strike down Roe v. Wade, the bill strangely ignores Colorado’s history as one of the most permissive in the nation on abortion. In 1967 — six years before Roe — Colorado became the first state in the union to make abortion legal. If Roe falls, abortion won’t become illegal. Instead, Colorado law will govern here.
Even without House Bill 1279, which Gov. Jared Polis will sign, Colorado is one of only a few states that puts no restrictions on when a woman may have an abortion. Since 2000, Colorado voters have rejected multiple pro-life ballot measures ranging from restrictions on late-term abortions to giving full legal rights to an unborn child.
Likewise, the Legislature has repeatedly rejected anything that would impede, in even the slightest manner, a woman’s decision to have an abortion.
Colorado law places only two limitations on abortions: a requirement that parents of a minor who seeks an abortion be notified (including a fairly simple judicial bypass for a minor who doesn’t wish to notify her parents) and a prohibition against using taxpayer funds to pay for abortion.
Beyond that, Colorado law shows little regard for unborn human life. In fact, animals literally have more rights in Colorado than the unborn.
Colorado Revised Statutes define cruelty to animals as “deprives of necessary sustenance, unnecessarily or cruelly beats … mistreats or neglects any animal.” Animal cruelty begins as a misdemeanor, but aggravated animal cruelty, defined by severe, intentional mistreatment, is a felony.
Yet unwanted, unborn children can be disposed of in manners so inhumane that legislators on both sides of the issue understandably cringe at hearing them described. All that matters under Colorado law is that the mother of the child no longer wants that child.
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