Abortion rights organizer Bernal-Montanez announces Pueblo City Council bid
Jacquelyn Bernal-Montanez helped organize people against a proposal to curtail abortion access in Pueblo. Now she’s running for city council.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 50-year precedent ensuring abortion access set by Roe v. Wade less than a year ago, community activists on both sides of the charged issue have mobilized across the country. Bernal-Montanez’s campaign comes as more municipal candidates in the U.S. make reproductive health care a central issue.
Bernal-Montanez is running for the at-large seat that will be contested in November. She founded a Facebook group to organize abortion rights activism in Pueblo shortly after news broke about the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Clinic.
“First I was sad, and then I got mad: that kind of led into me founding Pueblo Pro-Choice,” Bernal-Montanez said.
She also was involved in mobilizing activists last fall when Pueblo City Council was considering an anti-abortion ordinance. Bernal-Montanez said she’s “always been an activist,” but is making her first foray into electoral politics.
More: 'Like an ambush': Pueblo city councilors detail how failed abortion ordinance came to be
What Bernal-Montanez wants to do if elected in Pueblo
Bernal-Montanez is joining several other candidates who have already announced bids for the at-large seat that is currently represented by Lori Winner, including Brandon Martin and Elvis Martinez.
Bernal-Montanez is a fourth-generation Puebloan. At her current job, she trains customer service staff.
Ensuring Puebloans’ access to reproductive health care is one of Bernal-Montanez’s top priorities, but she would also want to address the “intertwined” issues of homelessness, the ongoing drug epidemic and mental health.
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She said that the “catch and release” approach to addressing homelessness by arresting people and involving police doesn’t get to the “root of the problem.”
Bernal-Montanez would support a version of Denver’s STAR program, where mental health professionals are dispatched to appropriate calls for police response. Councilor Sarah Martinez has been advocating to implement a similar program in Pueblo: Mayor Nick Gradisar said at city council’s retreat last month that he asked Pueblo police to start collecting information on such programs.
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Bernal-Montanez said the city should spend more on health, harm reduction and needle exchanges — evidence-based approaches that she said have worked in other cities. She said that drug use is stigmatized and cited data that people who seek out needle exchange programs are five times more likely to enter drug treatment than people who don’t access the services.
Bernal-Montanez said the city should help fund more grassroots organizations helping people, build additional shelters for people experiencing homelessness and provide more training to police officers.
Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics for the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com or on Twitter, @annalynnfrey.
This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Abortion rights organizer Bernal-Montanez running for city council
