Rather than battle Republicans over a proposal they stressed would help protect reproductive rights, Senate Democrats on Wednesday spiked the legislation — a move that drew applause from some religious groups packed into the chamber’s gallery who strongly opposed it.
Senate Bill 175 — also known as the Reproductive Health Freedom Act — sought to ban any state or local policy that “denies or interferes with an individual’s reproductive health care decisions.”
All Senate Republicans, alongside the Archdiocese of Denver, denounced the legislation as “overreaching” and “ambiguous,” saying the measure was not needed.
“It’s a solution in search of a problem,” said Sen. Bernie Herpin, R-Colorado Springs. “There is no one, no evidence, that has said there’s a denial of things like contraception to women in Colorado.”
Sen. Andy Kerr, D-Lakewood, who sponsored the measure, said he carried it because constituents expressed at town halls and forums concerns over efforts in other states to make it more difficult for women to seek guidance on abortions and receive common forms of contraception.
“It became obvious that D.C.-style politics were going to be happening in the last three weeks of session here,” Kerr said Wednesday, noting Democrats, who hold a single-seat majority over Republicans in the Senate, felt this bill would be made into spectacle by their GOP counterparts.
“Delay and filibustering tactics were going to become the absolute rule of the day here over the next three weeks over SB 175,” Kerr said in offering comments to reporters about why he killed the measure without Senate floor debate.
Some GOP lawmakers criticized Kerr’s bill as political theater in an election year where the Jefferson County Democrat faces a tough re-election.
Kerr said he had the 18 Democratic votes to pass his measure, although Sen. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins, said he was undecided.
The proposal, written more like a resolution, offered limited details. For example, a section of the bill reads that the “state, its agencies, institutions, political subdivisions and units of local government shall not enact a policy regarding reproductive health care that is inconsistent with or interferes with access to information based on current evidence based scientific data and medical consensus.”
“What (Democrats) ran into was a firestorm of public dissent. Period. A firestrorm of public opposition to this political hatchet job is what Senate Bill 175 was. They got called on it … and they put this entire institution into significant turmoil,” said Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs.
Kurtis Lee: 303-954-1655, klee@denverpost.com or twitter.com/kurtisalee
