Federal judges in Colorado issued a pair of rulings on state abortion laws last week that could have national consequences, reinforcing the state’s burgeoning status as a battleground over abortion access.
First, U.S. District Judge S. Kato Crews upheld a 1993 Colorado law prohibiting activists from approaching people within 100 feet of the entrance of a health care facility to pass them a leaflet, display a sign or engage in “oral protest, education or counseling.” The ban, sometimes called the “bubble law,” was enacted by the legislature as a way to shield women getting an abortion from harassment, though it doesn’t apply just to abortion clinics.
Crews wrote July 29 in a summary judgement that since the U.S. Supreme Court already validated the law in a 2000 ruling, the lawsuit challenging the statute, filed by Wendy Faustin, who in court filings said she “believes that abortion is a horrific moral wrong,” can’t move forward.
That may not be the end of the story, however, as the legal challenge always seemed aimed at moving the case up the appellate ladder in an attempt to get the Supreme Court to reconsider.
Faustin, who brought the lawsuit in June 2023, appears to be hoping to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2000 ruling on Colorado’s bubble law now that there’s a conservative majority on the court. She argues the bubble statute violates her First Amendment free speech rights, as well as her 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the nation’s laws.
Faustin is represented by lawyers for the First Liberty Institute, a Christian nonprofit based in Texas.
Crews was nominated to the federal bench by President Joe Biden.
Separately, U.S. District Judge Daniel D. Domenico ruled Friday that Colorado cannot enforce its 2023 law prohibiting so-called abortion pill reversal against a Catholic health clinic in Englewood.
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Bella Health sued in 2023 to invalidate the law, arguing it infringes upon its First Amendment rights. In October 2023, Domenico granted a preliminary injunction temporarily preventing the clinic from being subject to the statute.
Abortion pill “reversal” is the idea that the effects of the first pill in a medication abortion regimen — a drug called mifepristone — can be counteracted if someone decides not to take the second pill. Mifepristone works by blocking receptors for progesterone, a hormone needed to continue a pregnancy. Providers of “reversal” care try to override this block by flooding patients with high doses of progesterone in the hopes of continuing the pregnancy.
The practice is not federally regulated. Scientific support for the idea is spotty at best — and reports of success are undermined by the fact that, when taken alone, mifepristone can be ineffective at causing an abortion, making it unclear whether the progesterone provides any added benefit.
But no study has conclusively debunked the treatment, either.
At least one study has suggested there may be an added risk of severe bleeding in patients who take mifepristone without then taking the second abortion drug. In defending the law, however, the state didn’t cite instances of harm or patient complaints from the practice.
The treatment is most often provided in anti-abortion clinics, many of which are faith-based.
“While the clinical efficacy of abortion pill reversal remains debatable, nobody has been injured by the treatment and a number of women have successfully given birth after receiving it,” Domenico wrote in his ruling last week permanently blocking the state from enforcing the law against Bella Health.
Colorado can still prohibit other clinics from offering abortion pill reversal.
Domenico was nominated to the federal bench by President Donald Trump during his first term.
The case is also likely to move through the federal appellate court system. Some other Democratic-controlled states have sued to block abortion pill reversal under the claim that it represents false advertising. In some Republican states, legislatures have moved to require that abortion clinics inform patients about abortion pill reversal.