(Denver) Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis on Friday signed a series of health care bills that guarantee access to abortion and gender-affirming procedures and medications, while that the Democratic-led state is trying to become a safe haven for its neighbors, whose Republican leaders are restricting access to this care.
The purpose of this legislation is to ensure that people from neighboring states and beyond can travel to Colorado to have an abortion, start puberty blockers, or have gender-affirming surgery. without fear of being sued. Bordering states of Wyoming and Oklahoma have passed abortion bans, and Utah has severely restricted transgender care for minors.
Many states prohibiting abortion or transgender care also criminalize travel to other states for the purpose of accessing legal health care.
These conflicting laws pave the way for interstate disputes comparable to the various same-sex marriage laws that existed until 2015, or the legal dispute of the 19e century on whether runaway slaves from free states remained the property of their masters when they escaped north.
With these new laws, Colorado joins Illinois as a progressive peninsula offering reproductive rights to residents of conservative states on three sides. Illinois abortion clinics now serve residents of a 2,900-mile strip of 11 Southern states that have largely banned abortion.
California and New York are considering similar bills after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, putting abortion laws in the hands of state legislatures.
Colorado’s southern neighbor, New Mexico, is also Democrat-controlled and signed a similar abortion law earlier this year. This law legally protects people who seek abortion or gender-affirming care, as well as people who provide such treatment, from interstate investigations.
Governor Polis added the first layer of protection to abortion a year ago, signing an executive order that prohibits state agencies from cooperating with out-of-state investigations regarding reproductive health care. One of the bills he will sign on Friday codifies this decree. Like the New Mexico law, it blocks subpoenas and search warrants from states that decide to prosecute someone for having an abortion.
She extends those protections to transgender patients who escape restrictions imposed by their own state. Gender-affirming health care has been available for decades, but some states have recently banned minors from accessing it, even with parental consent. Hospitals in some of these states say gender-affirming surgeries are rarely recommended for minors anyway. Puberty blockers are more common.
Conservative states oppose it. Idaho has passed a law that prohibits providing a minor with abortion pills and helping her leave the state to terminate a pregnancy without parental consent.
The Colorado law comes as medical abortions are in limbo across the United States and mail-order prescriptions for an essential abortion drug are virtually banned pending the outcome of a federal court proceedings.
Also on Friday, Polis signed a measure banning the “deceptive practices” of anti-abortion centers, which pose as abortion clinics but do not actually offer the procedure. Instead, they try to convince patients not to terminate their pregnancies. The bill also prohibits sites from offering to reverse a medical abortion.
A third bill signed Friday requires large employers to cover the full cost of an abortion, with an exception for those who object on religious grounds. Public sector employees are exempt from this requirement because the Colorado constitution prohibits the use of public funds for abortions.