Colorado may soon require its colleges and universities to stock abortion pills in their campus pharmacies under legislation passed Monday by the state House.
passed on a near-party-line , with nearly all of the chamber’s Democrats in support against their Republican colleagues and a lone Democratic dissenter. After it passed the abortion measure, the House then passed , which would require inspections of immigrant detention centers and direct the state to publicly disclose when it receives federal immigration subpoenas.
Both bills now go to the Senate, with just over two weeks remaining in this year’s legislative session.
If passed, the abortion measure would require both public and private colleges and universities with health centers to provide students access to abortion medications that end pregnancies. Any campus with an on-site pharmacy would be required to stock the medication. At colleges without pharmacies, health center providers would directly dispense the pills or write prescriptions that could be filled elsewhere.
The bill would go into effect Aug. 1, 2027. It would not apply if a college says that providing the medication would violate its religious principles. Colleges would also be exempted if they could lose grant funding for stocking the pills; if federal regulators should later pull approval for an abortion medication, the measure would direct colleges to follow that federal guidance.
The standard abortion prescription typically involves two medications, typically mifepristone and misoprostol, taken within a day or two of each other, .
Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat who sponsored the bill, said Monday that the measure came from students. The bill strengthens Colorado’s already robust abortion protections, with both state law and the state constitution protecting abortion access.
“This bill is nothing more than making sure that the constitutional right — that our voters put in place — is made accessible when people have gone through the challenging and difficult process of making the decision to have an abortion; that the abortion pill is accessible if they are on campus,” she told colleagues.
In the bill’s fiscal impact note, legislative analysts projected zero direct expense to the state from the bill, since it doesn’t require the state to cover the cost of the medication unless a student already qualifies otherwise.
Students who testified at a committee hearing earlier this month said providing access at health centers would help provide students with reliable and nearby access to abortion care.
One student from the University of Colorado’s Colorado Springs campus — whose testimony was read by an organizer from the advocacy group New Era — said she didn’t know where to go when she decided to end her pregnancy. She nearly went to a “fake abortion clinic,” she said.
Another student, Paola Ordoñez Sanchez at Colorado State University, said she had an unexpected pregnancy in October. When she sought an abortion, she said, she had to coordinate transportation, miss classes and figure out how to pay for her treatment off-campus.
She tearfully said she “fell through the cracks” of CSU’s health system.
Republicans consistently have opposed Democrats’ efforts to expand abortion access, and they did so again with HB-1335, arguing that the abortion pills could have negative side effects on the women who take them. House leadership limited debate on an initial vote Friday.
“Adoption is also a choice. If we’re going to provide information, we should provide it all,” said Rep. Rebecca Keltie, a Colorado Springs Republican. She was supporting an amendment that would’ve blocked colleges from using various revenue sources to promote the availability of the pills.
“We should make it fair and equitable and then let that person decide for themselves,” she said.
The lone Democrat who opposed the bill was Rep. Bob Marshall, who represents Highlands Ranch. He said he’d committed not to support further expansions of abortion rights. He also said he didn’t understand the need for the bill because abortion pills can be dispensed in myriad other ways.
House passes immigration bill
Also Monday, the chamber cleared HB-1276 on a straight 42-21 party-line vote.
The bill would tweak several parts of state law, largely in response to events from the first year of the immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump. After Gov. Jared Polis has repeatedly tried to comply with a federal immigration subpoena, HB-1276 would generally require the state to publicly disclose when it receives those types of requests.
It would direct the state to notify people whose information is about to be released.
The measure would also prohibit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering nonpublic areas of jails. That comes after an advocacy group in the high country has warned that immigrants are being arrested inside the facilities after posting bail or otherwise being released. Lawmakers had initially blocked ICE from entering those areas in legislation debated last year, but they struck that provision before the bill passed.
The new measure would require regular inspections of immigration detention centers, stepping up state regulators’ current ability to visit at will. That comes amid ongoing concerns about the conditions inside Colorado’s only active detention center in Aurora — and amid ICE’s plans to open more facilities here.
Finally, the bill would tighten penalties for state and local agencies when their employees illegally share information with ICE. Lawmakers enacted a penalty of up to $50,000 last year for any employee who illegally collaborates with federal immigration authorities; this year’s bill would apply that fine to agencies that either directed their employees to break the law or intentionally failed to mitigate that risk.
That provision comes after a Mesa County deputy appeared to violate state law last year, when he alerted ICE to a Brazilian college student’s presence on Interstate 70.
The bill still needs approval by the Senate before it goes to the governor. On Thursday, Polis declined to take a position and indicated he wasn’t aware of what the measure would do.
“There’s one thing … which we are generally supportive of, which is inspection of detention facilities,” he said after a reporter listed the bill’s contents. “There are other things that we might not be, so we’re always happy to provide feedback to legislators about where we are. When the bill passes, I weigh the good and the bad and make a conclusion about what’s in the best interest of the state.”
