DENVER (LifeSiteNews) – The Colorado legislature has sent to Democrat Gov. Jared Polis legislation that would mandate that universities in the state offer abortion pills, regardless of whether they are public or private institutions.

HB26-1335 requires any higher educational institution with a student health center or pharmacy to distribute abortion “medication” onsite and requires any that does not to “either submit a prescription for abortion medication to a pharmacy located off campus or dispense abortion medication through the institution’s student health center if permitted by the student health center’s licensure.”

The bill exempts schools with conflicting “bona fide religious beliefs or practices” (potentially leaving open the danger of the state deciding for itself what it does and does not consider religious enough to qualify) but explicitly applies to private institutions as well as those operated or funded by the state, a significant expansion of presumed government authority.

It passed the state House 41-22 on April 27 and the state Senate 23-12 on May 13 and now requires only the governor’s signature to become law, which Live Action notes is expected to come in June.

“Mandating abortion provision transforms student health centers beyond their traditional scope. Student health centers are designed for primary care, preventative services and limited outpatient management of common diseases,” warns Dr. Tom Perille of American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNS and Democrats for Life of Colorado. “They are not equipped to deal with complex reproductive health services that commonly require follow-up and surgical interventions.”

Several states have taken to offering abortion pills to college students as a way to sustain abortion-on-demand without Roe v. Wade, with some going so far as to put abortion-inducing drugs and birth control pills in school vending machines. Abortion pills have become key to the abortion lobby’s effort to preserve “access” in a post-Roe environment despite the risks to the women who take them as well as their fatal harm to the unborn.

Pro-lifers point to an April 2025 analysis by the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) which concluded that almost 11% of women suffer sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other major conditions after taking mifepristone, according to insurance data, plus similar findings by the Restoration of America Foundation, as part of a “growing body of evidence indicating that the health risks associated with mifepristone abortions are severe, widespread, and significantly underreported.”

As questions swirl over what, if anything, the Trump administration will do about permissive federal abortion pill rules, Colorado is doing all it can to perpetuate abortion-on-demand.

State law allows abortion for effectively any reason, enabling an “all-trimester” abortion center to be opened last year in Boulder, the same city that once hosted notorious late-term abortionist Warren Hern.

Despite being such a haven for the “choice” of killing the unborn, Colorado has little respect for the choices of those who disagree. It is currently under federal investigation for suspicion of coercing health providers into covering abortions and, in January, was forced to pay $5.6 million to a pro-life medical clinic it targeted for offering abortion pill reversal.