Colorado Voters Reject Ban on Abortions after Viability

A majority of Colorado voters rejected a ballot measure which would have banned most abortions after 22 weeks.

According to the latest update on The New York Times, 1,744,953 people, or 58.9%, voted against the initiative and 1,218,589, or 41.1% voted in favor of it.

Proposition 115 would have prohibited abortion “when the probable gestational age of the fetus is at least twenty-two weeks.” Any doctors who performed the procedure would be charged with a misdemeanor and have their medical license suspended for three years. They would have been punished with a fine, but not jail time.

The measure carved out an exception if “the abortion is immediately required to save the life of the pregnant woman.” It went on to specify that this did not apply in cases where the threat was “solely by a psychological or emotional condition.”

Opponents of Proposition 115 painted it as an effort to restrict health care for vulnerable women and spent $9 million to oppose it compared to only $505,488 in spending by supporters of the restrictions. Dusti Gurule, the executive director of the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights declared Proposition 115’s defeat as “a victory for every person who has ever been denied an abortion in their home state and had to travel thousands of miles for the medical care they needed.”

Lucy Olena, campaign manager for…