Nadine Bridges, the executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group One Colorado said in a statement, “Together, we must disrupt these systems of power and take control of our own choices. We must refuse to allow anyone to treat any of us as not human or whole!” You can read Bridges full statement here.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said she was “devastated and outraged.”
“Stripping away Americans' freedom to make decisions about our bodies, health, economic independence, safety & future is an injustice and tragedy,” Griswold wrote on Twitter. “Pregnancy should not be forced on women by government-it’s an individual’s freedom to make that choice.”
U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), meanwhile, described the decision to overturn Roe as an “activist ruling.”
“Today, a radical majority of the Supreme Court demolished fifty years of legal precedent,” Bennet wrote. “This activist ruling strips women of their individual liberty to make intensely personal decisions about their bodies and futures, and eviscerates their Constitutionally protected rights to freedom and equality.”
Bennet concluded his statement by calling on voters to “elect pro-choice majorities in the Congress” so that Democratic legislators could codify abortion access at a national level. It should be noted, though, that Democrats already control the U.S. House, Senate and Presidency; the party could pass such legislation, but it would require the abolishment of the filibuster, something more moderate members of the party are opposed to.
[Related: Why Democrats probably won’t get rid of the filibuster for abortion]
Moreover, a larger Democratic majority in Congress would do nothing to change the current ideological imbalance of the Supreme Court, barring the unlikely expansion of the number of justices.
Republican members of Colorado’s Congressional delegation celebrated the court’s decision to overturn Roe: U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn called the original Roe opinion “tragically wrong” and fellow Republican Rep. Ken Buck tweeted “the power to decide this profound moral question has officially returned to the states.”
Several studies have found that outlawing abortion does not lead to fewer procedures. Dr. Bela Ganatra, who leads the Prevention of Unsafe Abortion Unit at the World Health Organization, told NPR last month that there is a strong correlation between abortion bans and the rate of unsafe abortions.
Thirteen states have “trigger laws” in place that will ban abortion within 30 days of Friday’s decision. Three of those states — Utah, Wyoming and Oklahoma — border Colorado. Zero states bordering Colorado have abortion rights guaranteed in state law. Because Colorado is alone in this regard, abortion providers in the state are used to treating many out-of-state patients. The number of patients traveling from out of state is likely to increase now that nearby states will enact total abortion bans.
To find abortion clinics or an abortion fund near you, no matter what state you’re in, click here.
[Previous coverage: Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains: 'You couldn’t create a more terrifying scenario']
The immediate impact of the court’s ruling is that tens of millions of women and birthing individuals will no longer have reliable access to safe, legal abortions, a right that had been guaranteed for several generations of Americans before them. The longer-term impacts of Roe’s reversal are less clear, but as Mark Joseph Stern noted in Slate, “There is a strong correlation between states with restrictive abortion laws and states with high rates of maternal and infant mortality.” Abortion bans are also likely to increase childhood poverty.
In the dissenting opinion of Friday's decision, the liberal Supreme Court justices wrote, “With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent.”
Kyle Cooke is the digital media manager at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at kylecooke@rmpbs.org.
