Colorado Politics

Planned Parenthood targets Colorado, Cory Gardner in $45M abortion-rights push

Planned Parenthood’s political arms expect to spend $45 million on next year’s election in a campaign aimed at supporting abortion rights, and Colorado and Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner will get at least some of that attention.

How much? They’re not saying yet, a spokeswoman for the campaign said.

Those details will come later as the campaign progresses toward the 2020 election. The campaign nationwide aims to reach 5 million voters nationwide.

The large field of Democratic candidates for president have not made abortion rights a central point of discussion primary so far, even though most polls trend in favor of fewer restrictions and support the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortions nationwide.

Colorado was cited by Planned Parenthood Votes and Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado as one of the states to be targeted in what the organization called its voter outreach program. Colorado joins a list of “initial battleground states” that include Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Gardner is one of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans on the ballot next year, and his ouster is viewed as critical for Democrats to take the majority in the upper chamber.

The campaign is expected to include “large-scale grassroots organizing programs and targeted canvass, digital, television, radio, and mail programs to elect reproductive rights champions and stop the Trump’s administration’s anti-health care agenda in its tracks,” Planned Parenthood said in a statement Wednesday.

ProgressNow Colorado brought in a reproductive rights campaign specialist, Fawn Bolak, who also will be working with the Colorado Reproductive Rights, Health and Justice Coalition, which includes ProgressNow, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, New Era Colorado, COLOR and the Interfaith Alliance, Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights and others.

Bolak also will be working on the issue with the Colorado legislature, where Democrats hold majorities in the House and Senate, as well as the governor’s office. 

“The stakes couldn’t be higher in 2020, and Colorado will be leading the charge on electing champions for reproductive freedom up and down the ballot,” Sarah Taylor-Nanista, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado, said in a statement. “Coloradans have made it clear they don’t want attacks on our access to birth control, life-saving cancer screenings, sex education, abortion access, and more, and they’ll be delivering that message at the ballot box on Election Day. Today, we’re putting Trump and his friends in Congress and in state legislatures on notice: We’re voting you out.”

Abortion-rights activists protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court during the March for Life in Washington on Jan. 18, 2019.
Jose Luis Magana / AP
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