Amendment 79: Constitutional Right to Abortion and Amendment 80: Constitutional Right to School Choice

Amendment 79: Constitutional Right to Abortion

(Numbered amendments, like Amendment 79 Amendment 80, are initiated by citizens.)

Amendment 79 would put the right to obtain an abortion into Colorado’s Constitution and repeal the existing ban on state and local government funding for abortion, so public employees can use their health insurance for abortion care. Amendment 79 will make it harder for Colorado legislators to pass laws in the future to regulate or restrict abortion in any way.

After the 2022 Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Christian nationalist majority ended Americans’ federally-guaranteed right to access abortion, Colorado’s legislature enacted a state law to protect people’s right to abortion. But since legislators can amend or repeal existing state laws, Coloradans can easily lose this right again if Republicans gain a majority in the state legislature.

Amendment 79 makes it far more difficult to eliminate the right to abortion, because only a majority of state voters can amend the state’s constitution. Thus Amendment 79 will help preserve Coloradans’ freedom to make their own personal health care decisions regarding abortion and keep the government from interfering in such decisions.

The state has determined this measure will have no fiscal impact on state or local governments.

Who supports Amendment 79:

Amendment 79 is supported by Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Colorado Democratic Party, the Colorado League of Women Voters, the Archuleta County Democratic Party, the First Unitarian Society of Denver, Catholics for Choice, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, and Democratic members of Colorado’s federal House Representatives including Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow, Brittany Petterson and Yadira Caraveo.

Who opposes Amendment 79:

The forced pregnancy advocacy group “Pro Life Colorado,” the Archbishop of Denver and Coloradans for the Protection of Women and Children oppose Amendment 79. According to Colorado Tracer, Colorado televangelist and Christian Dominionist Andrew Wommack has given $30,000 to oppose Amendment 79. In February, 2024, Wommack said “it would be worth having a civil war to turn this nation back to God.” Tom Bjorklund, the current Treasurer of the Colorado Republican Party, is also one of the biggest donors to the effort to defeat Amendment 79. Bjorklund is a well-known election fraud conspiracist from Grand Junction who participated in the January 6 insurrection. He is the registered agent for Coloradans for the Protection of Women and Children and has donated $10,000 to oppose the measure, mostly through his Grand Junction-based business, Tactical Data Solutions.

Since Amendment 79 is a constitutional amendment, it needs at least 55% of the vote to pass.

Recommended vote on Amendment 79: YES

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Amendment 80: Constitutional Right to School Choice

Amendment 80 puts a right to school choice into the state Constitution.

The Colorado Constitution already guarantees a free public education and a substantial number of existing state laws give parents wide latitude in choosing from many public school options or educating their children at home or in private schools, although private and home schools don’t get any public funding. Thus Amendment 80 wouldn’t do much immediately, but it could eventually threaten the amount of state or local money that goes to public education.

Advancing school choice” is a goal of Trump’s Project 2025, which says “advancing school choice policies” should be a goal of presidential candidates with the end goal of regulating the curriculum of all schools to promote conservative policy positions and ideology to students and remove education about racial and gender issues. Project 2025 (pdf) says (at page 6) “universal school choice” is “a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue,” and “The noxious tenets of ‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’ should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children…” Another goal of Project 2025 is to direct more public money away from public schools to destabilize America’s system of public education.

Project 2025 makes clear that the ultimate goal of advancing school choice is to use schools to push a conservative ideology into students’ minds. The National Education Association says “Discussing human rights and equity should be welcomed in classrooms, not dismissed as ‘partisanship’ or ‘politics,'” and when teaching about politics, educators should strive for neutrality.

Who supports Amendment 80:

This is another bill sponsored by Michael Fields and Advance Colorado Action. Fields is the former leader of the Colorado branch of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded group that has poured money into influencing American elections to help conservative candidates and positions. Advance Colorado is a right wing group whose Executive Vice President is Kristi Burton Brown, and attorney and former Chair of the Colorado Republican Party who has worked on pro-bono projects for the Life Legal Defense Foundation, an organization that promotes forced pregnancy. She’s also done pro bono work for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization founded by leaders of the Christian right, including James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a fundamentalist protestant evangelical organization the primarily focuses on fighting LGBTQ rights. Amendment 80 is also supported by the Colorado Association of Private Schools, Colorado Catholic Bishops, Colorado Catholic Conference, and the Independence Institute.

It’s also supported by former Mesa County Commissioner and now State Sen. Rose Pugliese, who supported Tina Peters for Mesa County Clerk and Recorder in 2018.

Who opposes it:

Amendment 80 is opposed by the Colorado Democratic Party and the Colorado Education Association (CEO), whose president, Kevin Vick, had this to say about it:

“They’re using the innocuous word of ‘choice’ as a vehicle for what opens the door clearly for a voucher scheme. There’s no other reason to include private schools in [the initiative] unless that is their ultimate intent. … We’re definitely concerned about the implications of this ballot measure. It has the potential to do tremendous damage to already fragile school funding, and we’re also extremely worried about the lack of transparency built into this measure with public funds.”

The CEA’s leaders say “Amendment 80 is not about choice, it’s about hurting our public schools. Don’t be fooled by this backdoor attempt to push money to private schools at the expense of our kids in public schools.”

It’s also opposed by the Colorado Association of School Executives, the ACLU, the Colorado AFL-CIO labor union, the League of Women Voters Colorado, the American Association of University Women, Advocates for Public Education Policy, The Bell Policy Center and others.

Recommended vote on Amendment 80: NO