Political | Process

Women can legally undergo the procedure at any point during pregnancy. It put into state statute that the legal access to an abortion shall not be denied or restricted regardless of federal actions to weaken it.

“This important bill simply codifies existing protections in statute,” Polis said on Monday upon signing the bill into law.

The state has a record of supporting access to abortion, having been the first state to decriminalize the procedure in 1967. The populace has largely been on the side of abortion rights activists. In 2020, Colorado voters struck down a ballot proposal to ban abortions after 22 weeks by a margin of more than half a million votes

Colorado is one of only a handful of states including Alaska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia, that do not restrict abortions after a certain gestational age. This opens the door to legal abortions beyond the point at which the fetus can live outside the womb, between 22 to 24 weeks, which have also been referred to as “late-term abortions.”

Abortions at or after 21 weeks, which is considered late, are relatively rare. They represented less than 1% of abortions performed in the U.S., or 4,882 of 491,901 in total, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2019, the most recent year for which numbers are available. The majority of abortions, nearly 93%, occur within the first 13 weeks of gestation.

Relatively few providers will perform abortions later in pregnancy even if their states permit them. Planned Parenthood in D.C., for instance, will not perform in-clinic abortions after 20 weeks.

Still, Colorado is home to one of only a handful of abortion providers that will perform the procedure beyond 28 weeks. The Boulder Abortion Clinic, run by Dr. Warren Hern for over four decades, is the state’s only late-term abortion provider. Hern’s own reporting for procedures performed between 1992 and 2012 at his clinic included those performed as late as 39 weeks into pregnancy.

The U.S. has relatively liberal abortion laws compared to most other countries, which generally require a reason for the abortion, such as saving the woman’s life or a foreseeable lack of resources to care for the unborn child. In more than 65 countries, including the U.S., abortions are broadly legal during some part of pregnancy.

The most common gestational limit is 12 weeks, and fewer than a dozen other countries allow abortions for any reason beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. In 24 countries, meanwhile, abortion is banned altogether.