COLOR’s Statement on the Conclusion of Colorado’s 2025 Legislative Session
Last year, we won Amendment 79. Our gente organized and Colorado enshrined abortion as a constitutional right, demanding care without barriers. This year, we took that demand to lawmakers during the legislative session.
We celebrate major wins made possible by community power as we passed bills to:
- Remove insurance barriers to abortion care for people on state insurance plans, including Medicaid, because no one’s care should be denied based on their health coverage.
- Strengthen our shield law to allow abortion providers to practice safely and with dignity.
- Protect access to emergency care by establishing a state standard to provide care, without discrimination, including based on someone’s ability to pay or type of care needed.
Our fight to establish a standard for emergency care that mirrored federal standards was met with resistance from industry voices that prioritized liability over life. The most powerful voices in those rooms were not patients or providers; they were lobbyists and insurance companies. That should concern us all, and we vow to continue to advocate for better access to emergency care in Colorado. We will continue to bring our power and our voices into the Capitol through storytelling, testimony, and presence.
This legislative session, we also defeated dangerous policies that threatened young people’s access to medical care, criminalized providers and trusted adults, and targeted our undocumented families. We stopped proposals that would have rolled back privacy rights and created barriers to care. As a Reproductive Justice organization, we know these fights are interconnected. That’s why we also supported bills to create stability for entire communities by protecting renters, workers, and the civil rights of immigrants in Colorado.
We’re proud of what we’ve protected and the historic wins we’ve achieved this legislative session. But we are clear: justice isn’t just about passing laws. It’s about honoring lived experiences and creating systems where dignity is non-negotiable. At Colorado Latino Advocacy Day, more than 400 community members from across the state gathered to advocate, mobilize, and learn the lobbying skills needed to turn bills into laws. This intergenerational event provided a platform for participants to demand safer, healthier, and more self-determined lives, showing lawmakers what “sí, se puede” means.
Because in this moment of increasing hostility toward reproductive justice and direct attacks on our communities, our fight has never been more urgent. And we’ll keep fighting, grounded in our principles and inspired by our collective power, for the future our communities deserve.
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Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR) is a community-rooted nonprofit organization that works to enable Latine individuals and their families to lead safe, healthy, and self-determined lives. Founded in 1998, we are the only Latina-led and Latina-serving multi-entity reproductive justice organization in the state. We bring an intersectional approach to our fight for reproductive justice, advancing issues impacting the Latine community in the areas of education, health care, civil rights, economic justice, and immigration.
