Colorado group says it has enough signatures for abortion rights vote this fall

A Colorado campaign trying to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution has gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot in November, CBS News has learned.

To change Colorado’s constitution, petitioners must gather 124,238 signatures from the state’s voters, including 2% of the total registered voters in each of Colorado’s 35 Senate districts, according to the Secretary of State. desk.

Colorados for Protecting Reproductive Freedom said its volunteers gathered more than 225,000 signatures and also met district requirements. The deadline for submitting signatures is April 18. A person familiar with the operation told CBS News that the group expects challenges from opposition groups over the validity of the signatures.

The announcement underscores the ongoing effort to put abortion on the ballot at the state level after the Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections with the Dobbs v. decision, which overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

Last week, the Florida Supreme Court cleared the way for a constitutional amendment on abortion rights to be voted on this fall, and organizers in Arizona also announced that they had surpassed the signature threshold for a ballot measure.

Similar efforts are underway in several other states.

Abortion is currently legal in Colorado, but the constitutional change would prevent the government from taking away that right and would also nullify a 1984 measure that prohibits health insurance from covering abortion care for “public employees and people with public insurance.”

Jess Grennan, campaign director for Coloradans to Protect Reproductive Freedom, said in a statement that the Arizona Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow an 1864 law that would ban most abortions to take effect “ultimately exposed the how vulnerable each state is, and will remain, without passing legislation that constitutionally guarantees the right to abortion.”

“Bill measures like Proposition 89 are our first line of defense against government overreach and our best tool for protecting the freedom to make personal and private health care decisions – a right that should never depend on the source of health insurance.” health or those in office, because a right without access is a right in name only”, said Grennan.

The amendment would need an absolute majority of 55% of voter support to be approved, according to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office.

Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, abortion rights measures have been successful in every state where they have been voted on — even in more conservative states like Kansas and Ohio.

There is also a separate movement in Colorado for a ballot measure that would define a child as “any living human being from the time human life begins biologically at conception, through all stages of biological development until the child attains emancipation as an adult” and would prohibit harm to such – effectively banning almost all abortions.