A proposed amendment that would formally enshrine access to abortion in Colorado’s constitution is all but certain to appear on the November ballot after a coalition of reproductive rights advocates said Friday they have collected the required number of signatures.
Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom, the group leading the effort, announced it had collected the signatures of more than 225,000 registered voters, more than the approximately 124,000 required by April 26 to qualify for this fall’s ballot.
To formally qualify, the total must include 2% of all registered voters in each of the state’s 35 state Senate districts.
As of Friday, the group said it had met that threshold in all but three districts and that they were only short of the required number in those three districts by fewer than 100 signatures. They expressed confidence they’d meet the necessary thresholds in the coming days.
“The news of Arizona’s near-total abortion ban ultimately exposed just how vulnerable every state is, and will remain, without passing legislation that constitutionally secures the right to abortion,” Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom campaign director Jess Grennan said in a statement. “Ballot measures like Proposition 89 are our first line of defense against government overreach and our best tool to protect the freedom to make personal, private healthcare decisions—a right that should never depend on the source of one’s health insurance or who is in office, because a right without access is a right in name only,” she added.
Grennan’s statement referred to the state Supreme Court ruling in neighboring Arizona, which allowed for a near-total abortion ban from 1864 to be enforceable.
Colorado is one of at least 11 states where organizers are seeking to enshrine abortion rights in a state constitution via a citizen-led ballot initiative. The measures are officially on the ballot in Maryland, New York and Florida, where the state Supreme Court
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