Last June, the progressive advocates of ColoradoCare encountered some surprise opposition from other progressives to their ballot initiative, Amendment 69, which calls for replacing private health insurance with a state-chartered, single-payer universal health care system. The opposition came from NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado. On Monday, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains joined this opposition.
The problem, as NARAL and Planned Parenthood see it, comes from Amendment 3, the Ban on Public Funding of Abortion Act. Voters—50.4 percent of them—put that amendment into the state constitution in 1984. Even though Colorado was one of the first states to loosen abortion restrictions in 1967, as a consequence of the amendment, no tax money can be spent to provide an abortion except when the mother’s life is at risk.
NARAL leaders believe abortion in instances when the life of the mother is not at risk, which is the vast majority, will be excluded from coverage under ColoradoCare since it will be operating as a government subsidiary.
Advocates of the initiative argue otherwise and sought for months to gain NARAL’s support or at least its neutrality. But the abortion rights board voted to oppose Amendment 69. Susan Greene at The Colorado Independent reported in June:
“I think everybody supports the goal of improved healthcare for all Coloradans. But because Amendment 69 can’t provide guarantees to affordable abortion access, it isn’t truly universal health care,” said NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado’s director, Karen Middleton. [...]
“We’re not going to be quiet about it when it’s a very obvious policy hole in what otherwise might have been a good idea,” Middleton said.
The ColoradoCare campaign has challenged NARAL’s claim.
Owen Perkins, a spokesman for ColoradoCareYES, said: "The amendment provides for the ability to cover a necessary medical treatment, and abortion would fall into that category." Ralph Ogden, the group's constitutional lawyer wrote a two-page memo on the matter, stating that when two laws are in conflict, the new one takes priority because it better represents the current views of voters. The memo states:
"The general rule is that where an apparent conflict exists between two statutes, the courts must attempt to harmonize them to effectuate the intent of the general assembly," the memo reads. "If the two cannot be harmonized, the statute enacted last in time controls."
Middleton doesn’t buy it. According to her legal advisers, the Colorado Supreme Court rarely accepts the view that the less recent law should fall by the wayside because it’s in conflict with the new one. Laws like Amendment 3 that are very specific, she says, are more likely to be upheld, and the 1984 law is very specific. Her organization wants to overturn it, but that would take a ballot proposal—an expensive project for NARAL, with its limited resources.
The opposition frustrates state Sen. Irene Aguilar, one the original proponents of ColoradoCare. Becca Andrews writes:
Aguilar, a medical doctor who specialized in internal medicine, agrees universal care should include abortion; she's worked before with NARAL and Planned Parenthood on legislative issues and she identifies as pro-choice. But this time, "it never crossed my mind," Aguilar said. "I felt like it would have been nice if in the six years I'd been working on this it had been brought to my attention."
Aguilar also says the controversy is overshadowing all the good things ColoradoCare would do for women's health in the state. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good," she insisted. Aguilar claimed that ColoradoCare would provide insurance for the 350,000 residents who aren't covered; 500,000 women would have coverage for reproductive health care; only 12 percent of women pay for abortion with insurance anyway.
The matter may be moot. A poll by Magellan Strategies released last week shows ColoradoCare losing by an overwhelming margin. Only 27 percent of Coloradans back the plan, with 65 percent against and just 8 percent undecided. Among the key objections: ColoradoCare would be funded by a 10 percent payroll tax and a 10 percent tax on non-payroll earnings. That is estimated to raise $25 billion in revenue. Colorado currently only raises about $10.5 billion in tax revenue each year.
Whatever happens to Amendment 69, the ban on public spending for abortion in Colorado ought to be overturned, just as Congress should stop the annual renewal of the federal, classist Hyde Amendment, which bars tax money for all abortions except those that endanger the life or health of the pregnant woman. Given the renewed aggressiveness of reproductive rights advocates, the odds of these changes actually happening have improved. But the opposition is still tough.
