Abortion access would be protected in Colorado’s constitution under a pair of 2024 ballot measures filed earlier this month by abortion-rights groups.

Each of the initiatives would also lift the state’s nearly 40-year-old constitutional ban on state dollars being used to pay for abortions. 

Democrats in the state legislature passed a bill in 2022 guaranteeing abortion access in state law. But that measure could be overturned or undermined by a simple majority vote in the General Assembly, or by the passage of a statutory ballot measure, which also only requires a simple majority to pass.

Initiatives 89 and 90 would go a step further by putting the nearly unfettered right to get an abortion in Colorado in the state’s constitution, which could only be overturned by a 55% vote of the people. Getting a constitutional amendment on the ballot itself is also immensely difficult. 

Karen Middleton, who leads Cobalt Advocates, one of Colorado’s most prominent abortion-rights groups, said the initiatives are aimed at guaranteeing abortion access in the state for the “long haul.”

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