December 13, 2022 12:01 PM UTC

Defeated Pueblo Abortion Ban Won't Be The Last

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Pueblo Chieftain’s Anna Lynn Winfrey reports, a proposed ordinance in Pueblo that would have banned abortions in that city, modeling a local ordinance that has spread in other states lacking Colorado’s recently-passed robust abortion rights protections, is dead after a 4-3 vote to indefinitely table the measure:

Council President Heather Graham, Vicente Martinez Ortega, Sarah Martinez and Dennis Flores voted to pull the ordinance from the agenda, with councilors Regina Maestri, Lori Winner and Larry Atencio voting to keep the item on the agenda.

Graham, who recently announced a bid for mayor, introduced the motion to table the item. She said that regulating an abortion clinic is not within the purview of city council.

“If you want to stop abortion, I suggest you take it up with the state legislature, the state medical board or file a federal injunction. I do not wish to even allow the public testimony on this because we do not govern it,” Graham said.

The proposed abortion ban in Pueblo came in alleged response to the opening of a clinic in the city providing abortion care, but the clinic appears to merely have been a pretext for Pueblo to be the first of what is likely to be some number of Colorado towns passing a similar ordinance. The organizer of the broader campaign to create “sanctuary cities for the unborn,” Texas pastor and self-described “36-year-old virgin” insurrectionist Mark Lee Dickson, promised the Colorado Sun’s Elliot Wentzler that Pueblo won’t be the last:

Dickson’s group, which has helped abortion bans get approved in about 60 cities in at least five states, set its sights on Pueblo after an abortion provider, Clinics for Abortion and Reproductive Excellence, purchased a building in the city. The provider, which has clinics in Nebraska and Maryland, hasn’t said when it plans to begin operations in Pueblo. The city doesn’t have any other existing abortion clinics and the closest option is 50 miles away in Colorado Springs, according to The Pueblo Cheiftain.

But the defeat doesn’t mean Dickson is done with Colorado. While Dickson hasn’t identified any specific communities he’s working with, he told The Colorado Sun he’s been in discussions with pro-life leaders in the state for several years.

Dickson’s campaign to pass municipal abortion bans across Colorado fits perfectly with the strategy that Colorado Republican Party chair Kristi Burton Brown has identified for the party moving forward from 2022’s devastating losses at the polls: pushing the party’s agenda in school board races and at the local government level. These small-ball organizing efforts give beleaguered Republicans something gainful to work towards, and supposedly non-partisan municipal races give Republicans cover to get back in the game while sidestepping their toxic party brand. This particular stunt will only work until successful passage somewhere prompts the inevitable legal response that puts Colorado’s statewide statutory abortion rights protections to the test, but that will take time.

The city of Pueblo, which has long been considered a Democratic stronghold despite the occasional anomalous result at the polls, has a much clearer understanding now of the political leanings of their nominally “nonpartisan” city councilors than they did before this controversy. For the purpose of clarifying for Colorado’s blue-majority voters who their electoral friends and foes are, these municipal abortion bans could prove very useful.

If Republicans are confident in taking their rejected agenda local, let’s see how Dickson plays in Aurora.