U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen speaks to a crowd gathered to see the Harris-Walz campaign’s “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” tour bus Monday at Raíces Brewing Company in Denver. (Lindsey Toomer/Colorado Newsline)
The Harris-Walz campaign’s national “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour made two stops in Colorado Monday to highlight the Democratic presidential ticket’s commitment to ensuring reproductive health care access.
At the bus’s first stop of the day, at the Raíces Brewing Company in Denver, Colorado Democratic officials and abortion advocates spoke to a crowd about how Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz would protect reproductive rights, contrasting them with Republican former President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance.
Dani Newsum, director of strategic partnerships at Cobalt Advocates, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade “unleashed devastating consequences across the country.” She mentioned Amber Thurman and Candy Miller, two Black women from Georgia who died after trying to have an abortion after the state’s abortion ban went into effect. Both deaths were officially deemed preventable by the state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee.
“We all remember the day that Roe fell,” Newsum said. “It was a day when millions of women lost their fundamental right to make decisions about their bodies, about their lives.”
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Newsum said Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint to implement conservative policies across the federal government if Trump wins in November, would give Trump “virtually unchecked power over women’s bodies” and force states to monitor pregnancies and miscarriages.
“We must stand united against this extreme agenda and elect the only candidates in this race who are fighting to protect and restore reproductive freedom, not take it away,” Newsum said.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis highlighted Colorado’s Reproductive Health Equity Act, which state lawmakers passed in 2022 to protect access to abortion in state statute. He also noted a ballot measure going to voters this year that would enshrine the right to abortion in the state Constitution. Amendment 79 is backed by Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom, a coalition of abortion rights groups and other progressive organizations including Cobalt.
“Here in Colorado we don’t just believe in freedom, including reproductive freedom. We fight for it,” Polis said. “This is truly a fight for our future, and in Colorado we’re taking action, and our mandate for leadership is to elect Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States.”
Denver resident Christine Shock poses for a photo in front of the Harris-Walz campaign’s “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” tour bus wearing a jean jacket she has decorated with buttons over her 40 years advocating abortion access, on Monday at Raíces Brewing Company in Denver. (Lindsey Toomer/Colorado Newsline)
Denver resident Christine Shock came to see the Harris-Walz bus wearing a jean jacket she decorated with pro-abortion rights patches and buttons over the 40 years she has advocated and volunteered in support of abortion access. “Every button has a story” from her advocacy efforts, she said.
Shock said she has worked as an escort at abortion clinics in Alabama, spoke at the Alabama and Nebraska legislatures in support of abortion access, and traveled around Colorado to help those behind Amendment 79 collect signatures to qualify for the ballot. She said seeing the bus come to Colorado shows that the state’s efforts are supported.
“I don’t think young gals today understand what it’s like. I had girlfriends who lost sisters … never knew their eldest sister because they died because of an illegal abortion,” Shock said. “And that’s why I fight … It’s just so important that my daughter, who is 24 years old, has the same rights that I did growing up, doesn’t have to fear that she’ll bleed out in a parking lot.”
It’s just so important that my daughter, who is 24 years old, has the same rights that I did growing up, doesn’t have to fear that she’ll bleed out in a parking lot.
– Denver resident Christine Shock
U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Lakewood Democrat, talked about unexpectedly discovering she was pregnant at 42 years old. She is now six months pregnant, but she said doctors initially weren’t certain her pregnancy would be viable.
“Every step of the way, I think about what people are facing across this country. People like two of my closest friends that went to their second appointment only to hear nothing,” Pettersen said. “And they weren’t investigated. They had access to the care they needed. But it was only because they lived in Colorado. That is absolutely unacceptable.”
Pettersen said the stakes of the 2024 presidential election “could not be higher” when thinking about women around the country “being forced to carry pregnancies to term after being raped” and “women facing medical emergencies who are being left to die because of Donald Trump.”
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper said doctors told his wife she had a “one in a million chance” of having a child, but because they were able to use in vitro fertilization, they now have a “22-month happy, healthy baby at home.”
“Let’s make no mistake — a second term is going to be 10 times worse,” Hickenlooper said. “Donald Trump’s 2025 agenda will ban abortion nationwide, jeopardize IVF, in-vitro fertilization, it’ll restrict access to birth control. All the things we take as basic rights, they will take away.”
Other speakers in Denver included U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who co-chairs the House Pro-Choice Caucus, and MasterChef winner and activist Claudia Sandoval. Sandoval joined the bus tour on its trip to Pueblo for a second stop in Colorado Monday, where she spoke alongside state Rep. Steph Vigil and Pueblo County Commissioner Daneya Esgar, who was a sponsor of RHEA when she was in the Colorado Legislature.
Pueblo City Council recently considered an ordinance to restrict abortion, which would challenge the state’s prohibition of a public entity from interfering with someone’s effort to have an abortion under RHEA. The next city council meeting is at 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 15.
The “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus has embarked on a national tour starting in mid-September, making more than 60 stops across the country where advocates tout the Harris-Walz campaign’s support for reproductive health care.
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