Pueblo City Council member Regina Maestri makes remarks about a proposed effective ban on abortion clinics in the city at council’s Dec. 12, 2022, meeting, as fellow council member Dennis Flores looks on. (Mike Sweeney, special to Colorado Newsline)
Pueblo City Council members voted Tuesday night to kill a proposed city ordinance that would have banned abortion access in the city, saving itself from an almost certain legal fight with the state.
The council voted 4-3 against advancing the ordinance for a public hearing and a final vote. Council members Regina Maestri, Mark Aliff and Brett Boston voted for it to move forward.
The ordinance was a resurrected version of a 2022 attempt that the council also narrowly rejected. It would have relied on a 19th century federal law known as the Comstock Act that restricts sending and receiving “obscene” materials, including abortion equipment through the mail. It is a legal strategy that some small cities across the country have implemented to restrict abortion access. Similar ordinances in two New Mexico towns resulted in a lawsuit that landed in that state’s Supreme Court last year.
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The Pueblo ordinance would have allowed private citizens to sue those who broke the federal law, rather than having police enforce its provisions.
It was brought by Maestri and supported by the conservative Christian group Forging Pueblo.
The ordinance stood in direct opposition to the Reproductive Health Equity Act, a Colorado law passed in 2022 that codifies a person’s right to an abortion. Pueblo County Commissioner Daneya Esgar, a Democratic former state lawmaker, was a lead sponsor on RHEA.
“I’m pro-life, but as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter how I stand on it,” council member Roger Gomez said. “There’s very little we can do, and I’m going to support state law.”
Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, and the American Civil Liberties Union pledged to sue Pueblo over the ordinance if it passed. That would have been the second lawsuit between Pueblo and the ACLU over a state law this year. The city in August lost in court over an ordinance that banned syringe access programs.
The potential violation of state law led Pueblo city attorneys to recommend against the ordinance, but the legal threat was not an issue for Maestri. She said she was comfortable if a case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The conservative, anti-abortion law firm Thomas More Society said in a letter to council that it would represent the city for free.
“I’m not bullied by the ACLU,” Maestri said in a passionate speech during the council meeting. “It’s about time we take on the battle and punch back (on) the ACLU for getting in our business, and it’s about time we fight back against the state for oppressing our community with bad, irresponsible policies. Now is the time to not be tread on by bad policies and bad legislation and clean up our city.”
Colorado voters will decide in November whether to put the right to abortion access into the state Constitution. In 2020, about 52% of Pueblo voters voted against a 22-week state abortion ban that appeared on the ballot.
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