{"id":104894,"date":"2016-05-27T21:46:58","date_gmt":"2016-05-28T03:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/abortion-rights-backers-attack-colorado-gop-legislators\/"},"modified":"2016-05-27T21:46:58","modified_gmt":"2016-05-28T03:46:58","slug":"abortion-rights-backers-attack-colorado-gop-legislators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/abortion-rights-backers-attack-colorado-gop-legislators\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion-rights backers attack Colorado GOP legislators"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Karen
Karen Middleton, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado, speaks at a rally at the Colorado Capitol in 2015, where abortion rights advocates called on Republicans to halt anti-Planned Parenthood rhetoric. In 2016, the group is illuminating anti-abortion rights efforts by Republicans in the recent session of the General Assembly.<\/span>Peter Marcus\/Durango Herald file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Abortion-rights advocates hope to take back the Colorado Legislature this year by attacking Republicans for standing in the way of reproductive health care rights.<\/p>\n

NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado this week highlighted two bills from the past legislative session that died in a Republican-controlled committee in the Senate.<\/p>\n

One of those bills, which would have allowed women to receive a 12-month supply of birth control, had bipartisan support in the House, with Republican Rep. Don Coram of Montrose co-sponsoring it. But the bill died in a Republican \u201ckill committee\u201d in the Senate.<\/p>\n

The other highlighted piece of legislation would have prohibited insurance companies from denying coverage or requiring a woman to pay out-of-pocket costs for all birth control.<\/p>\n

In addition to the bills that died, Republicans came back with a handful of perennial bills that Democrats shot down, including fetal homicide legislation and making abortion illegal in the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear where Senate Republicans stand on women\u2019s reproductive rights,\u201d said Senate Minority Leader Lucia Guzman, D-Denver. \u201cBut we held our own.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nothing new for the abortion debate to be used as a wedge during election season.<\/p>\n

The debate is sure to come up in the U.S. Senate race, as Democrat Michael Bennet works to hold onto his seat. And Hillary Clinton has pointed to the issue on several presidential campaign stops through Colorado.<\/p>\n

But the \u201cwar on women\u201d narrative has had mixed results.<\/p>\n

In the 2014 U.S. Senate race between Democratic incumbent Mark Udall and Republican Cory Gardner, Gardner was attacked by the abortion rights world. He went on to defeat Udall.<\/p>\n

Democrats had more success, however, in 2012 with the \u201cwar on women\u201d theme, which may have contributed to taking back the Colorado House from Republican control.<\/p>\n

They hope to use similar abortion rights messaging this year to take the state Senate back from Republicans, while maintaining control of the House.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to tell the story about what\u2019s happened to women\u2019s rights, to women\u2019s health care, and what is likely to happen if we\u2019re not in the majority,\u201d Guzman said during a NARAL conference call on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Abortion-rights advocates pointed to a listening session held by Republicans last year that was described as an informational event on fetal-tissue programs, but quickly turned into an attack of Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

At issue was anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress, which released videos last year that the group says showed Planned Parenthood profiting from fetal-tissue programs.<\/p>\n

A Texas grand jury that investigated accusations of misconduct against Planned Parenthood stemming from the secretly recorded videos instead chose to indict the videographers on charges of tampering with a governmental record.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese upcoming elections, it\u2019s very important that people are educated about who is running and what their positions are when it comes to issues that impact women and their pro-choice agenda,\u201d said House Majority Leader Crisanta Duran of Denver.<\/p>\n

Recent high-profile cases offer a backdrop to the abortion debate this year.<\/p>\n

In November 2015, a gunman targeted a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, killing three people, including a police officer. The admitted gunman this month was found incompetent to stand trial and indefinitely confined to a state mental hospital.<\/p>\n

In March 2015, a Longmont woman\u2019s 7-month-old fetus was cut from her womb by another woman. The woman convicted in the case was sentenced in April to 100 years in prison.<\/p>\n

The anti-abortion community isn\u2019t worried about backlash this year, even though Democrats plan to underscore the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cColorado Family Action knows that the people of Colorado are smart enough to discern a potential human rights violation,\u201d said Sarah Zagorski, policy director for Colorado Family Action, which helped organize the fetal tissue listening session last year, and maintains that Planned Parenthood engages in illegal fetal-tissue programs, despite the Texas indictment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overwhelming concern that government functions the way it is supposed to dictates that no person, no matter how small, should be subject to having their organs and appendages sorted out and sold for research. The people of Colorado can tell the truth from a lie and we trust them to do that in November.\u201d<\/p>\n

pmarcus@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pro-Choice Colorado wants Dems in control of state Senate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[2612,94,266,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-104894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-abortion","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-election","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104894"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=104894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}