Colorado will cover abortion for Medicaid patients, state employees as Gov. Polis signs public funding law

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed two abortion-rights payments Thursday that may allow using public funding to cowl the process and supply extra safety for docs and sufferers from out-of-state interference.

“Colorado is ensuring that we’re utterly defending the appropriate to decide on,” Polis mentioned earlier than signing the items of laws into legislation. “On the federal degree, we’re already seeing the federal government overreach threatening fundamental freedom in the case of essentially the most private and personal choices.”

“That’s not the Colorado method,” he added.

One new legislation, handed by the legislature as Senate Invoice 183, implements Modification 79, handed by voters in November to determine a constitutional proper to abortion in Colorado. It repealed an earlier provision within the state structure that prohibited placing public funding towards abortion; now the brand new legislation requires abortion care protection for Medicaid sufferers and Little one Well being Plan Plus program recipients utilizing state cash. Public workers’ insurance coverage will even should cowl abortion care.

The poll measure was authorised by 62% of voters within the November election. With the governor’s signature, the laws will take impact at the beginning of 2026.

State analysts estimated the price of public protection of abortion at practically $5.9 million within the first full fiscal yr, however they discovered it will really scale back prices total for the Colorado Division of Well being Care Coverage and Financing, which oversees Medicaid. Since prices for abortion care could be barely greater than offset by the lowered expense to cowl births, in accordance with the fiscal evaluation, the legislation is estimated to avoid wasting round $286,000 within the 2025-26 fiscal yr and about $573,000 within the subsequent fiscal yr.

The opposite legislation, handed as Senate Invoice 129, will ramp up the state’s 2023 defend legislation to protect reproductive well being care suppliers and sufferers — and their knowledge — from out-of-state investigations and different actions.

Dozens of individuals — largely girls — packed into the governor’s workplace within the state Capitol to hitch Polis and Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera. Primavera identified that her younger granddaughter had joined for the event.

“I need her to have the identical rights that I did rising up,” she mentioned.

One other invoice backed by abortion-rights advocates, Senate Invoice 130, continues to be ready to progress by means of the Home. It will add emergency abortion protections to state legislation so entry is assured when a affected person wants it. That’s at the moment included within the federal Emergency Medical Therapy and Labor Act, or EMTALA, however some states have focused the legislation’s mandated protection of emergency abortions within the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.

“We’ve got another invoice that’s defending and increasing emergency care,” Karen Middleton, the president of the reproductive rights group Cobalt, advised The Denver Submit on the Capitol. “There are well being care suppliers shifting to Colorado as a result of it’s secure right here, and we’re going to make it possible for demand may be met.”

The Democratic sponsors of SB-183 — state Sens. Robert Rodriguez and Lindsey Daugherty, together with state Rep. Lorena García and Home Speaker Julie McCluskie — had been current Thursday to have fun the invoice signing.

“I’m so happy with the work that’s gone on these previous a few years to put the groundwork for a poll measure that allowed the voice of the folks — the individuals who have employed us — (to) lastly be heard in a method that makes this a constitutional proper in our state,” McCluskie mentioned on the lectern.