For 104 years, the League of Women Voters has been empowering voters through nonpartisan voter education, engagement and, where necessary, litigation to ensure voters’ rights. Simultaneously, LWV has policy positions on matters of public interest irrespective of party politics. One such issue is reproductive health, specifically, a woman’s right to choose her reproductive health care, including abortion if that’s her choice.
Locally, the LWV of La Plata County supports embedding abortion rights into Colorado’s Constitution. We feel strongly about preventing politics, politicians and government from interfering in our most personal and private medical decisions, regardless of which party is in the majority.
Currently, our state constitution lacks protections for those reproductive rights. When those rights are a law, but not in our constitution, rights can changed with a stroke of a pen, depending on who occupies the governorship and Legislature.
Over the years, Coloradans across geographic and political party lines have repeatedly defeated numerous attempts to ban abortion on statewide ballots. By passing this year’s ballot measure, Amendment 79, voters will be changing the Colorado Constitution to recognize the right to abortion and prohibit state and local governments from denying, impeding or discriminating against the exercise of that right. It will also allow abortion to be a covered service under health insurance plans for Colorado state and local government employees and for enrollees in state and local governmental insurance programs.
Across the country, many laws and decisions restricting access to the full array of health care choices, including abortion, are equivalent to enforcing inferior medical care that disproportionately harms women by prioritizing personal belief over evidence-based medicine.
LWV recognizes that several factors may influence or necessitate a woman’s decision to have an abortion, such as rape, incest, intimate partner violence, fetal anomalies and illness during pregnancy. In addition, pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia or eclampsia, placental abruption, bleeding from placenta previa, ectopic pregnancy, fetal demise (death) and cardiac or renal conditions may be so severe that abortion is the only measure to preserve a woman’s health, fertility or to save her life.
Passing this measure is crucial for women’s freedom, bodily autonomy and access to the full array of health care, including, when needed, abortion. Abortion is an evidence-based medical component of women’s health and well-being. Right now, groups of politicians across our country are dictating medical care without medical training, and endangering women's lives.
Through our vote, we, the people of Colorado, can dictate the role the law plays when the decision about whether to get an abortion is being made. Passing this law is not a “yes or no” decision about having an abortion, but a vote that says the government should not be involved in the fundamental reproductive health care choices of the women of Colorado. This law says a woman has the power to make a decision with the people she chooses: her family, her faith leader, and her doctor – that’s freedom.
The LWV believes Coloradans have made clear their desire to keep government and politicians out of these decisions and passage of Amendment 79 will represent the will of Coloradans on the matter. We need a threshold of 55% “yes” votes to be able to enshrine this law into our constitution, so every vote is essential.
This measure to protect abortion rights in our constitution gathered over 225,000 signatures, the most ever collected for a citizen-led ballot measure in Colorado. Now it’s time to turn those signatures into a “yes” vote on Amendment 79.
The LWV of La Plata County urges you to vote “yes” on Amendment 79 – a measure that says, in Colorado our rights are nonnegotiable, our dignity is upheld, and our voices and bodies are fully valued. It’s a vote giving women sovereignty over their bodies.
Board of Directors, League of Women Voters La Plata: Jan Phillips, Laurie Meininger, Nicole Garland, Madeline Miraglia, Martha Mason and Wendy Pollak
