DENVER (AP) – Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday signed a set of health care bills that provide access to abortion and gender-affirming procedures and drugs, as the Democratic-led state tries to create a safe haven for its neighbors. Republican leaders limited treatment.
The goal of the legislation is to ensure people in surrounding states and beyond can travel to Colorado to have an abortion, initiate puberty blockers or receive gender-affirming surgery without fear of prosecution. The border states of Wyoming and Oklahoma have passed abortion bans and Utah has restricted transgender treatment for minors.
Many countries that ban abortion or transgender treatment also prohibit travel to those countries for the purpose of accessing legal health care.
The disputed law sets the stage for interstate disputes comparable to same-sex marriage laws that existed until 2015, or the 19th-century legal conflict over whether fugitives who were fugitives in free states remained the property of slaves when they escaped in the north.
With the new law, Colorado joins Illinois as a progressive peninsula that offers reproductive rights to citizens of conservative states on three sides. Illinois abortion clinics now serve people who live within 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) of 11 Southern states that generally prohibit abortion.
California and New York are considering similar bills after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade, put abortion laws in the hands of the state legislature.
Colorado’s southern neighbor, New Mexico, is also controlled by Democrats and signed a similar abortion bill earlier this year. It legally protects those who seek abortions or gender-affirming treatment, and those who provide the treatment, from interstate investigations.
Governor Polis added the first layer of abortion protection a year ago, signing an executive order barring state agencies from cooperating with foreign investigations into reproductive health care. One of the bills signed Friday enshrined the order into law. Like New Mexico’s law, it blocks subpoenas, subpoenas and search warrants from states that decide to prosecute people for abortion.
It extends these protections to transgender patients who avoid restrictions in their own countries. While gender-affirming health care has been available for decades, some countries have recently banned minors from accessing it, even with parental consent. Hospitals in some of these countries say gender-affirming surgery is rarely recommended for minors. Puberty blockers are more common.
Conservative countries are retreating. Idaho passed a bill banning the provision of abortion pills to minors and helping them leave the state to terminate pregnancies without parental consent.
Colorado’s law comes as medication abortion is in limbo in the US and mail-order prescriptions of an essential abortion drug are nearly banned pending the outcome of a federal court case.
Also on Friday, Polis signed a measure banning “deceptive practices” by anti-abortion centers, which are known as abortion clinics but do not offer the procedure. Instead, he tried to convince the patient not to terminate the pregnancy. The bill also bans sites offering to cancel medical abortions.
A third bill signed there requires large employers to offer coverage for the total cost of abortion, with exceptions for those who object on religious grounds. It exempts public employees because the Colorado constitution prohibits the use of public funds for abortion. ____ Jesse Bedyn contributed to this report. Bedayn is a member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative corps. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on hidden issues.