Opinion: Amendment 79 would harm Colorado’s pregnant women and their babies
Colorado Sun
As an obstetrician-gynecologist physician who practiced 24 years, including performing second trimester abortions on “special needs” babies, I was shocked when I moved to Colorado and learned abortions are legal through the entire pregnancy, and mostly performed on healthy mothers and babies. I did not know these occurred anywhere in the world.
Colorado’s abortion laws are among the most extreme in the world, according to a recent analysis, and one of only nine states plus Washington, D.C., that allow abortion at any point in pregnancy. This is not a good thing. After eight weeks of pregnancy, the risk of dying from abortion increases exponentially by 38% per week. Mortality in the six months up to 10 years after later abortion is much higher than after live childbirth. Considering the size of a woman’s abdomen in the third trimester, how does the abortionist get a baby that size out? I looked it up — the procedure on the baby is horrific.
The current abortion law passed in 2022, despite 10-to-1 citizen testimony in opposition at the hearing I attended. Now Colorado citizens will be personally responsible to determine whether this extreme abortion law is enshrined in the constitution, and taxpayers forced to fund abortion through Amendment 79. Should the Colorado Constitution protect disposing of preborn human beings at all gestational ages for any reason, impede all safety protections for women, and exclude any involvement of parents, even for a 12 year-old girl? This is a huge responsibility with profound consequence. Please educate yourself before you vote.
The abortion industry’s strategy is always the same: protect abortion, not women. They call it protecting “access.”
Say you need a surgery. Do you go to just any provider or facility? Or do you want your surgeon to have adequate training and experience, verified credentials, without succession of malpractice? Do you insist that the surgical center be inspected, licensed, have low complication rates, and are prepared to manage complications and emergencies?
In Colorado, unlike outpatient surgical centers and hospitals, there is no licensure, regulation, inspection or oversight of abortion clinics. Abortion providers are not required to have specific training or experience, or to manage complications. This is blatant disregard of women’s health and life, and unlike any other health care. This initiative would be a barrier to commonsense regulation when egregious malpractice occurs.
The abortion ad campaign will focus on confusing the public and causing fear with misinformation. So, let’s make clear what is true in advance:
- Induced abortion to save a woman’s life is legal in every state. Abortion advocates use the word “health,” which means … anything, including social and financial.
- Colorado public funding (Medicaid) does pay for abortion when pregnancy results from rape or incest, and to save the mother’s life.
- Health care for miscarriages (the baby died of natural causes) and ectopic pregnancy (the baby implanted outside the uterus, a life-threatening condition) is legal in every state. This is not abortion care, and does not require legal abortion. Refusing to offer women care for these conditions constitutes malpractice, and is not the result of abortion restriction.
- Refusal to offer delivery to women with a life-threatening pregnancy complication, such as infection with previable rupture of the membranes, constitutes malpractice. It is not the result of abortion restriction. No state requires a woman to be at death’s door to receive life-saving health care.
- The abortion industry promotes misinformation that late abortions (after viability) are primarily done to save a woman’s life, or life-limiting fetal diagnosis. However, data reveals that women choose late abortion for the same reasons as earlier: primarily social and financial. Dr. Warren Hern, a third trimester abortionist in Boulder, reported that 70% of abortions he performs are on healthy moms and healthy babies, including some for sex selection. Colorado reported 468 late abortions last year — 1 of every 33 abortions.
- Life-threatening complications after fetal viability are most expediently and safely managed with delivery in a hospital labor and delivery, where continuous intensive monitoring and emergency intervention are immediately available. This does not require the intentional death of the viable baby. Late abortion involves intermittent care, typically over three or more days, without availability of immediate emergency interventions.
In the U.S., 86% to 93% of obstetrician-gynecologists do not perform abortion. Abortion has never been necessary to provide exemplary health care. We have always known how to manage life-threatening pregnancy complications without directly taking the life of the baby.
Amendment 79 would protect abortion, and those who profit from it, not women. It is time Colorado took its place as a leader for excellent health care for women and preborn babies.
Our radically extreme abortion laws place women’s lives and health in grave danger, and harm us all. Pregnant women and their babies deserve excellent and equitable health care, and support during difficult situations, not abortion as the state-sanctioned only option.
Dr. Catherine J. Wheeler lives in Teller County and is an obstetrician gynecologist.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.