Colorado Governor Signs Bill Codifying ‘Fundamental Right to Abortion’
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Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a bill on Monday codifying the “fundamental right” to abortion, contraception, and other forms of “reproductive health-care” in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s upcoming review of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which challenges the viability standard set in Roe v. Wade.
The measure “codifies a person’s fundamental right to make reproductive health-care decisions free from government interference” and explicitly denies the unborn baby the right to be born. “A fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of this state,” the law reads.
“In the State of Colorado, the serious decision to start or end a pregnancy with medical assistance will remain between a person, their doctor, and their faith,” Polis wrote in a statement Monday.
“Access to abortion and reproductive health care is currently under attack across the nation. Impending federal court cases, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,… jeopardize access to legal abortion care for tens of millions of people, particularly those living in most Southern and Midwestern states,” he added.
State or local interference in an individual’s decision to receive an abortion is forbidden by the law due to the “potential, actual, or perceived impact on the pregnancy, the pregnancy’s outcomes, or the pregnant individual’s health.”
“Every individual has a fundamental right to make decisions about the individual’s reproductive health care, including the fundamental right to use or refuse contraception,” the law reads. “A pregnant individual has a fundamental right to continue a pregnancy and give birth or to have an abortion and to make decisions about how to exercise that right.”
Many Republican states have prepared for the upcoming Supreme Court term by passing “trigger” laws that automatically prohibit abortion in the event of a Roe reversal as well as legislation that restricts abortion to the very early stages of gestation. However, some blue states, like Colorado, have responded with defiance. In 2019, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law enshrining the right to abortion into law and ending protections for the unborn. In January, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a similar measure.
Dobbs, the landmark case on the high court’s docket, concerns a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks, typically the benchmark for when a fetal heartbeat is detected. The case naturally forces the court to reconsider the standard of fetal viability, long established to be about 28 weeks, which, if redefined, will nullify the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion on a national scale, sending the issue to the state legislatures to decide.
Since the enacting of the Texas heartbeat law, which has a novel enforcement mechanism that allows private citizens to sue doctors who perform abortions before a fetal heartbeat is detected, Democrats have attempted to leverage their small minority in Congress to codify Roe v Wade via the Women’s Health Protection Act.
