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Colorado Gov. Jared Polis this week signed a bill into law mandating that all colleges and universities provide abortion pills to their students.
House Bill 1335, which goes into effect Aug. 1, 2027, will require that any campus that has a pharmacy to stock abortion medications. For campuses that do not have an on-site pharmacy, they are required to provide prescriptions that can be filed by a local health services provider.
There are a few exemptions carved out, however.
“An institution is not required to provide access to or stock abortion medication if doing so would jeopardize an institution’s federal grant participation, … modify the generally accepted standards of medical practice, or conflict with the institution’s sincerely held religious beliefs or practices,” according to Colorado’s website.
Democrat Rep. Lorena Garcia stated the new law will protect students’ “constitutional right” to have an abortion by making sure the abortion pill is “accessible if they are on campus.” Garcia refers to Amendment 79, the Colorado constitutional amendment protecting abortion, passed in 2024.
The bill was passed on partisan lines, with only one Democrat, Rep. Bob Marshall, opposing the bill. No Republican voted for the bill, either in the Senate or the House.
Though not spelled out in the legislation, the typical abortion prescription in Colorado involves the medications of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly dubbed “the abortion pill.”
Mifepristone is known to give the serious side effects of high blood pressure, vaginal bleeding, bacterial reaction, and sometimes septic shock, according to Healthline.com.
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