Colorado lawmakers this week plan to introduce a pair of bills that would further strengthen state laws around abortion access — aimed both at building off recent ballot box success in the state and guarding against potential federal action.
The proposals, which sponsors plan to file Wednesday, come as proponents see renewed threats to reproductive health care from the federal government, including the White House and U.S. Supreme Court. At the same time, several conservative states are seeking to lock down abortion access, including care provided by doctors elsewhere.
“Bringing these efforts forward right now is a ray of hope in a pretty bleak landscape for abortion access and gender-affirming care across the country,” said Kiera Hatton, the organizing political director for Cobalt Action, an abortion-rights advocacy group, about the new legislation.
One bill, akin to a shield law, would add new protections for abortion providers who provide care to people in states that are hostile to the procedure. Abortion-rights advocates point to a recent lawsuit filed by the Texas state government against a New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills to a Texas woman.
On Friday, a grand jury in Louisiana issued an indictment against the same New York provider, Dr. Margaret Carpenter, for allegedly prescribing an abortion pill online to a resident of that state. She was charged with criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs, a felony.
The second Colorado bill proposes adding to state law the emergency abortion protections guaranteed in the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. That 1986 law ensures access to emergency medical care for anyone who needs it, including emergency abortions and miscarriage care necessary to stabilize a patient.
Some states have targeted the law’s mandated coverage of emergency abortions with their own state-level abortion bans.
The U.S. Supreme Court narrowly rejected a case from Idaho last summer challenging the federal protections. Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for President Donald Trump’s second term, has specifically set a goal of reversing “distorted pro-abortion ‘interpretations’ ” of the law.
The new Colorado bills will likely face stiff opposition from Republicans in the state legislature, but Democrats hold large majorities in both the House and the Senate.
Rep. Megan Froelich, an Englewood Democrat and sponsor of the emergency care bill, recalled the passage of the state Reproductive Health Equity Act in 2022, ahead of the Supreme Court decision overturning federal abortion rights with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“We don’t have a Supreme Court that protects women and pregnant people, and we don’t have an administration that protects women and pregnant people. So we have to make sure that’s the case in Colorado,” Froelich said. She called the national landscape “hostile to women’s rights and reproductive rights.”
Froelich said the bill she’s backing is about making sure those who are pregnant know they can get emergency health care they need, especially as some have been told they can’t be given care for miscarriages or obtain abortions unless the life of the mother is imminently threatened. It will also protect health care access for people who are trying to start a family and run into complications with their pregnancies, she said.
The proposed shield law would build on a 2023 state law that was aimed at protecting providers and patients in Colorado from enforcement of other states’ laws criminalizing abortion. It did so by setting out that authorities here couldn’t cooperate with out-of-state criminal or civil investigations or carry out arrests for something that’s “a legally protected health-care activity” in Colorado.
Sen. Lisa Cutter, a Jefferson County Democrat who will carry the bill, said the new push is about making sure providers are protected when they care for out-of-state patients. That includes prescriptions made online or over the phone, with the medications then mailed to patients.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit over such a case in December. He accused the New York doctor of violating Texas state law by providing the drugs to the patient in his state. The suit does not involve criminal charges but seeks $250,000 in civil damages. Louisiana’s criminal indictment Friday shares similar allegations.
“There’s a lot of ways to chip away at something,” Cutter said. “No matter what our laws are here in Colorado to protect safe and legal abortion and reproductive health care,” she added, other states can interfere. If they go after abortion providers — making people in Colorado feel threatened — “that’s going to be a problem, and Coloradans won’t have access.”
Advocates point to Colorado’s long history of defending abortion rights, most recently with voters approving an amendment to the state constitution in November that guarantees access to it.
“We need to do all we can as these federal protections are eroded — as these attacks from other states continue — to ensure Coloradans can receive and access that care they need,” said Vanessa Martinez, the vice president of policy for the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, or COLOR.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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