Bill was heard by the Senate Health and Human Services Committee on April 10, 2014 and was passed out of committee 4-3

Thank you Madam Chair and members of the committee.  My name is Stephen Meswarb.  I am the Deputy Director of the ACLU of Colorado, and I am here to speak on behalf of the ACLU in support of Senate Bill 175.
The ACLU has consistently advocated for policies that support women’s decision making, advance women’s health and well-being, and ensure strong, healthy families. This bill does that.
In the last several years, we have seen the most significant state legislative attacks on reproductive freedom in decades.  In 2013, the ACLU and our allies battled legislation that sought to restrict access to the full range of reproductive health care in more than 30 states.
In some states, politicians are passing laws that ban most abortions; others are passing bills that block a woman from getting care for two or three days, or attempt to shame a woman out of her decision by requiring a doctor to give her biased, and often medically inaccurate, state-mandated information.  These restrictions are clearly designed as political interference in a woman’s medical decision-making and not part of a true informed consent process.
Colorado has been no exception.  Our state has seen its fair share of attacks on reproductive health care access, despite a long history of very clear support for reproductive freedom and privacy by Colorado voters.
In 1967, Colorado became the first state in the nation to liberalize its abortion laws, six years ahead of Roe v. Wade.  Since that time, our state’s voters have consistently and repeatedly strongly opposed attempts to inject the government into private health care decisions that should be made solely by women and their families, their doctors, and their faith.
In 2008 and 2010, Colorado voters rejected personhood initiatives by over 40-point margins, and we will face yet another such attempt this fall.  Each year, abortion bans and other attempts to limit reproductive health care are introduced, and fail, in this legislature.
This bill will stop Colorado from following the path of other states where politicians have interfered with women’s rights to an abortion and to private reproductive health care decisions.
With this bill, Colorado has an opportunity to put a stop to these out-of-touch and unconstitutional attempts once and for all. It will affirm the will of Colorado voters and ensure that every Coloradan has the right to make their own, individual, private reproductive health care decisions, in consultation with their doctor, not the government.
Deciding whether and when to become a parent is one of the most private and important decisions a person can make.  This bill would help protect a woman’s ability to make those decisions privately in consultation with her doctor and her family – and without political interference.
Government interference in reproductive health decisions does not represent the values of Coloradans.  The people of our state believe we should be able to make these decisions for ourselves without politicians and politics getting in the way.
For all these reasons, I urge you to vote yes on this bill.  Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

 
The struggle to find drugs to carry out lethal injection has made headlines all over the country and was recently featured on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report.
Pharmaceutical companies who make these drugs have started to ban their sale for executions, and states are scrambling to find alternatives, with many dangerous consequences.
An Oklahoma execution made the news when the prisoner’s last words, after being injected with one of the drugs, were “my whole body burns.”  In Ohio, it took over twenty minutes to kill an inmate, while he screamed and struggled on the execution table.
Now some states are turning to compound pharmacies and other questionable means for getting the drugs they need.  They are masking this practice in secrecy and lawsuits are popping up all over the country in search of public disclosure.
Last year in Colorado, when Nathan Dunlap was scheduled for execution, the ACLU of Colorado filed a lawsuit to determine the state’s planned lethal injection protocol, the drugs that prison officials intended to use, and where those drugs were coming from:
https://aclu-co.org/court-cases/aclu-v-colorado-department-of-corrections/

Thankfully, Governor Hickenlooper, expressing several concerns with Colorado’s broken death penalty system, halted the execution.
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, prison officials were bartering for drugs with Texas by offering to help if they threw the OK vs. TX football game:
http://www.coloradoindependent.com/146553/oklahoma-scrambles-to-find-lethal-injections-for-two-imminent-executions

And now Oklahoma is planning to use secretly sourced experimental drugs, despite a court ruling against their use:
http://www.coloradoindependent.com/146830/oklahoma-to-use-secretly-sourced-experimental-lethal-injections-in-spite-of-court-ruling

The Huffington Post has an excellent infographic calling this the “New Costs of the Death Penalty”:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/02/lethal-injection-drugs_n_4979654.html

As the nation deals with this lethal injection drug shortage, it is a good time to take a step back and evaluate whether the death penalty should be used anymore.  It is costly, unfairly applied, there is chance that an innocent person may be executed and now, it is hard to even follow through with the punishment.

DENVER — Why Marriage Matters Colorado, the broad coalition working to remove discrimination from Colorado’s constitution and secure the freedom to marry for all committed couples, announced today that a new economic study released by the Williams Institute shows that extending marriage to gay and lesbian couples in Colorado would generate $50 million in spending to the state economy and $3.7 million in state and local tax revenue.
The Williams Institute, a national think tank at the UCLA School of Law, has released a full version of the report, which can be found here.
Looking at 2010 U.S. Census data on the number of gay and lesbian couples living in Colorado, the Institute estimates that 50% – roughly 6,200 couples – would choose to marry in the first three years, a pattern that has been observed in Massachusetts and elsewhere.
In the first three years of extending marriage to same-sex couples, the study estimates that:

· The state’s wedding business would see an increase by $40 million, and an increase of roughly $10 million in tourism expenditures made by out-of-town guests over the same period.

· Total state and local tax revenue would rise by $3.7 million, including an estimated $2.3 million in local sales taxes. The first year would produce $2 million of this spending.

· The boost in wedding spending will generate approximately 436 jobs in the state.

The report also takes into account the couples who have already celebrated their marriage elsewhere and the estimated 3,976 Colorado resident couples who have already entered into civil unions. If those couples marry without ceremonies, the economic impact will be smaller: roughly $32 million.
“We’ve already known that marriage would give committed couples here in Colorado the opportunity to make a lifetime promise to each other and protect their families the same way everyone else does,” said Dave Montez, Executive Director of One Colorado, the state’s leading advocacy group for LGBT Coloradans and their families. “Now we know that marriage equality would also benefit our economy and contribute to the state’s bottom line.”
For specific inquiries about the report and its findings, contact Laura Rodriguez at 310-956-2425 or [email protected].
 
Why Marriage Matters Colorado is broadening the dialogue with Coloradans about why marriage is important to same-sex couples and their families and why it is consistent with the values of liberty and freedom. More information on this statewide initiative – which is being spearheaded by leading statewide LGBT advocacy group One Colorado, ACLU of Colorado, and Freedom to Marry – can be found here: www.whymarriagematterscolorado.org