FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, February 17, 2023
CONTACT: Sara Loflin, Executive Director at [email protected] or Kayla Frawley, Legislative Director at [email protected]
DENVER: Three anti-abortion bills failed on a party-line vote in the Colorado House Health and Insurance Committee today. House Bills 1097, 1119, and 1150 all attacked abortion access, something Colorado voters resoundingly rejected in the 2022 midterm elections.
“Republicans have clearly learned nothing from their repeated defeats over abortion rights at the ballot box. They keep running bills that insult Colorado voters and values,” said ProgressNow Executive Director Sara Lu Loflin. “As someone who had an abortion that literally saved my life, I can personally speak to the fact abortion is health care. Coloradans know that too – which is why they strongly support abortion rights and keep a pro-abortion rights majority in the legislature.”
“It is still astonishing that so many lies, falsifications, and far-stretching explicitly racist connections can be made by the anti-abortionists in front of lawmakers. We listened to their lies for hours in testimony – including making the comparison of an abortion to beating a newborn with a bat, and a ‘Dr.’ say “trimesters are made up by lawyers’–which is dangerous and false. Anti-abortionists are not safe for even pregnant people & are strategically predatory–today they made that point, if any, crystal clear” says Kayla Frawley, Legislative Director of ProgressNow Colorado.
“While progressives won another fight for abortion rights today, far-right Republicans continued to disgrace themselves and the General Assembly with their outrageous diatribes and denigration of the LGBTQ+ community,” said Loflin. “During today’s testimony, Rep. Scott Bottoms of Colorado Springs called abortion rights ‘demonic thinking’ before smearing an LGBTQ+ reporter covering the hearing. Even with the smallest minority in decades, Republicans in the Colorado legislature are pushing ahead with their unrelenting assault on the rights of anyone who doesn’t conform to their beliefs.”
“Abortion care is reproductive health care, plain and simple,” Loflin concluded. “Coloradans have long understood and repeatedly rejected proposals that hamper a doctor and patient’s ability to make decisions about their bodies. It’s past time the Republicans who keep bringing these doomed-to-failure bills did, too.”
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