How will Donald Trump’s presidency affect abortion rights in Colorado

Democrats made abortion and reproductive health care access central to the 2024 elections, and voters in seven states, including Colorado, approved constitutional amendments to guarantee the right to abortion.

Colorado’s abortion rights advocates are hoping the issue will be low on President-elect Donald Trump’s priority list. 

“There’s a big laundry list for his administration and, fortunately, we’re not on the short list,” said Karen Middleton, president of Cobalt Advocates, a Colorado abortion rights nonprofit that backed Amendment 79, the measure that amended the Colorado constitution to protect access to abortion. “I’m actually hoping that keeping it to the states will be at least an early priority.”

During the presidential campaign, Trump said he would veto a national abortion ban if Congress passed it because a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade sent the issue back to the states. 

Brittany Vessely, executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference, said she doesn’t expect much federal action aimed at abortion. Instead, she expects court challenges to Colorado’s new constitutional provisions.

“There will not be a federal ban,” said Vessely, who helped lead the opposition to Amendment 79. “I anticipate legal action over 79.”

But some national abortion opponents still hold out hope that Trump will take other measures to curb or even outlaw the procedure. Several national groups this week outlined plans to fight back against changes in Colorado and other states, as well as potential action federal and state governments could take to limit abortion.

Here’s a look at what’s happened and what could happen in the battle over reproductive rights.

Where the law stands now on abortion rights

Nearly 62% of Colorado voters agreed to guarantee access to abortion and other reproductive rights such as birth control in the state Constitution. Coloradans have consistently rejected ballot measures to curb abortion, and now, as a result, most legislative action will also be moot.

Arizona, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York voters also passed similar constitutional guarantees this month. But such measures failed in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota. Nebraska voters adopted a ban on abortion in the second and third trimesters with some exceptions.

Thirteen states ban abortion entirely, while another 11 limit the procedure from six to 22 weeks, according to news organization KFF.

Vessely predicted the legislature will try to spend taxpayer money for abortions or insurance coverage for the procedure for state employees. She said abortion opponents are exploring legal action over the constitutional amendment. 

“It does interject the government in the parent-child relationship and violate parental rights,” she said, although proponents of the amendment say a 2003 parental notification law is not affected by it.

What role might Congress play?

Project 2025, a 900-plus-page policy map for the Trump presidency, mentions abortion numerous times, saying “the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.”

But to enact a national abortion ban, the Senate would have to abandon its filibuster rule that basically requires 60 votes to end debate and bring a bill to a floor vote. 

Colorado’s two senators and its four Democratic U.S. representatives who will return to office in 2025 support abortion rights.

Of the four Republican U.S. representatives who will take office next year, two told The Colorado Sun that they would oppose a national abortion ban: state Rep. Gabe Evans in the 8th Congressional District and Grand Junction attorney Jeff Hurd in the 3rd District. 

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who will represent the 4th District in 2025, said she would support such a ban, as did incoming 5th District Congressman-elect Jeff Crank, who said there would have to be exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.

Despite Trump’s veto threat of a ban, abortion opponents are hoping Congress will enact some form of legislation to curb the practice. In addition to outlawing abortion, the groups want to outlaw the drug mifepristone, which is most often used to induce abortions early in pregnancy. 

The U.S. Supreme Court last summer rejected an attempt by doctors who oppose abortion seeking to limit access to mifepristone. But the court left open future challenges to the drug.

Is legislation necessary to limit abortion?

Some abortion opponents hope the Trump administration will use regulatory power to further curb abortion. 

That could mean reversing FDA regulations allowing mifepristone to be used to end pregnancies, or prohibiting online prescriptions for the drug. The EPA is being encouraged to declare the drug an environmental hazard in an effort to limit its use. Vessely said the environmental approach might be proposed by abortion opponents at the state level as well.

Some opponents hope the administration will use the Comstock Act, an 1873 law limiting distribution by the U.S. Postal Service of obscene materials or anything used to induce abortion, from mifepristone to medical supplies. 

Project 2025 offers other potential administration actions:

• Reversing policies allowing abortion access in the military and health care for veterans
• Prevent funding for other countries that might be used to pay for or promote abortion
• Require states to report detailed data on abortion to the CDC
• Disqualify medical providers who perform abortions from the Medicaid program

How might new laws or regulations impact Colorado?

The courts will also be a focus for the Trump administration, potentially allowing legal challenges to impact abortion, said Mary Ziegler, a University of California Davis law professor and expert on abortion law.

“Trump is going to nominate hundreds of judges, and he already nominated hundreds of judges,” she said. “So outcomes that most court watchers would think were pretty unlikely right now may not be pretty unlikely four years from now.” 

The biggest threat to Colorado’s constitutional amendment would be an effort to redefine the word “person” in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to include a fertilized egg.

“Then Colorado’s abortion protection, and reproductive rights protections or protections for IVF would all violate the federal constitution,” Ziegler said.

It’s likely abortion rights groups and Democratic attorneys general in the states would challenge any attempt to override state laws in the courts.

Middleton noted the influx of out-of-state women coming to Colorado for abortions, with Cobalt Foundation picking up some of the financial costs. She said medical professionals also have moved here from states that have banned abortions.

Despite Colorado’s new constitutional amendment, the fight to protect reproductive rights will live on.

“We just can’t give up,” Middleton said. “We’re going to have to stay strong, and we can’t just roll over.”

But Vessely isn’t giving up, either.

“Colorado is the epicenter of abortion legislation in the country after Amendment 79,” she said. “In this country we have a pendulum swinging, and Colorado has swung the pendulum so far to the progressive left that even voters didn’t understand what Amendment 79 could do.”