Colorado
House committee kills 3 abortion bills, including one that would have made practitioners felons
DENVER – A Colorado bill that would have put practitioners who perform abortions in the same criminal category as first-degree murderers, child abusers who cause a child’s death and people charged with treason was among three abortion-related bills killed in a House committee Thursday.
The three bills, House Bills 1085, 1086 and 1108 all died with 6-5 party-line votes in the House Health, Insurance and Environment Committee.
The outcome was to be expected in the Democrat-majority committee chaired by Rep. Joann Ginal, Ph.D., a Fort Collins Democrat who is also a reproductive endocrinologist.
House Bill 1108 would have made it a class 1 felony for practitioners to perform an abortion unless it is intended to save the mother’s life or unless the unborn child dies as a result of medical treatment, such as chemotherapy – putting those practitioners in the same class as Colorado’s worst criminals.
Rep. Steve Humphrey, R-Eaton, said the Democrats’ vote meant they were “out of touch with the shifting public attitudes towards abortion.”
“In the four decades since the Roe v. Wade decision, scientific research has wholly disproved the long-held medical justifications for abortion,” he said in a statement.
The vice chair of the committee, Rep. Daneya Esgar, D-Pueblo, told Denver7 last month it was “a very dangerous idea to target doctors and health providers” with the bill.
“They are providing a medical service and should never be singled out. Abortion is not a crime, it’s a safe and legal procedure,” she told Denver7. “History has shown that banning abortion, or stopping access to safe abortions, is dangerous for women’s lives.”
Democrats on the committee also killed House Bill 1085, which would have required any clinics that provide abortions to register with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. Under the bill, the AG’s Office would have had to inspect each registered clinic at least once a year to be sure the clinics were using sanitary equipment and adhering to special rules also outlined in the bill for abortions performed after 20 weeks of gestation.
House Bill 1086 also died by a 6-5 vote. It would have required practitioners to tell a woman about a process that can be used to reverse “abortion pills” 24 hours before giving a woman the pill, and would require the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to post information on its website about the process.
“Why would we legislate the care a doctor provides a patient?” asked Rep. Susan Lontine, D-Denver. “I believe doctors should do what they do best: stick with evidence based practices, and politicians should stay out of the doctor’s office.”
Many of the state’s counties do not have abortion clinics, but the state does require only licensed physicians perform abortions, parental consent for women under age 18 to obtain an abortion, and that taxpayer funding for abortions is only provided to preserve a woman’s life or in the case of rape or incest.
The peer-reviewed research group Guttmacher Institute, which researches sexual and reproductive health and rights, found the number of abortions declined by 14 percent between 2011 and 2014, but that there was also a 14 percent decline over that time period in the number of Colorado facilities that provided abortions.
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Colorado marijuana leader says dismantling of industry would cause a recession
DENVER – Despite new figures that show Colorado’s marijuana sales topped $1 billion for the first time ever last year, there is some concern in the state over what could happen to the burgeoning business under new U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Sessions is on record in the past saying that “Good people don’t smoke marijuana” and that “marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized” and that it is “a very real danger.” Continue reading
Security officer at Colorado Springs juvenile facility arrested for alleged assault of inmate
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – A security officer at the Spring Creek Youth Services Center has been arrested for allegedly assaulting one of the youth inmates at the facility in September.
The guard, Dean Hawkinson, 58, turned himself in to authorities Thursday after an arrest warrant was filed on second-degree assault and child abuse charges.
The alleged assault happened Sept. 12 of last year. The Colorado Department of Human Services says Hawkinson allegedly grabbed the juvenile by their arm and squeezed their neck.
Colorado Springs police say they were made aware of the incident Sept. 29 and that the department’s Crimes Against Children Unit started an investigation.
CDHS says the juvenile was medically cleared and has since been released from the facility.
Hawkinson was placed on administrative leave following his arrest, CDHS says.
“The Division of Youth Corrections condemns the alleged actions in the strongest possible terms,” said Anders Jacobson, director of the Division of Youth Corrections. “The Division of Youth Corrections not only encourages employees to report incidents of abuse and neglect – we require it.”
CDHS says the Spring Creek facility was reorganized last October, after the alleged abuse, so that the only inmates were juveniles awaiting trial. The department says the changes improved staff-to-inmate ratios at the facility from 10-to-1 to 5-to-1.
Hawkinson was named as being one of several guard assaulted by juveniles at the facility in 2014 in a Colorado Springs Gazette story.
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2 Californians arrested with 14 pounds of suspected heroin in western Colorado
MESA COUNTY, Colo. – Two California residents were on Tuesday arrested with nearly 14 pounds of suspected heroin, according to law enforcement authorities.
A Mesa County sheriff’s deputy pulled a car over about 30 miles east of the Utah-Colorado border on I-70 because the car didn’t have a license plate and had a dark tint on the driver’s-side window, the sheriff’s office says.
The sheriff’s office says the deputy got permission to search the vehicle after allegedly smelling marijuana, and found six packages hidden behind a panel in the car that contained nearly 14 pounds of a white powder that tested positive for heroin.
The Western Colorado Drug Task Force arrested Ricky Medina, 24, and April Gomez, 23, on felony drug charges. Both are being held on $50,000 cash-only bonds at the Mesa County Detention Facility.
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Unsolved: Questions abound 4 years after pregnant Denver woman disappeared in Pueblo
February 18 is typically a day for celebration for Laura Saxton. It’s her daughter’s birthday. But every year, two weeks earlier, she now marks another anniversary: the day that same daughter disappeared.
Kelsie Schelling was 21 years old and eight weeks pregnant when she vanished on Feb. 4, 2013. She had her first doctor’s visit and had seen a sonogram of her baby earlier that day. Continue reading
Brooke Higgins, who plotted Mountain Vista HS shooting, sentenced to 3 years in juvenile facility
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. – The teen girl who pleaded guilty in December to conspiring to commit first-degree murder for plotting a 2015 attack to shoot students and teachers at Mountain Vista High School was sentenced Wednesday.
Brooke Higgins, 17, had also pleaded guilty to solicitation to commit murder in December.
She was on Wednesday sentenced to three years in the Division of Youth Corrections for the solicitation charge, but will get credit for 409 days served since her initial arrest. That juvenile sentence was stipulated under her plea agreement.
Higgins will also have to serve four years of supervised probation and mental health treatment after she is released from juvenile detention as part of a deferred sentence for the conspiracy charge. Should she successfully complete the probation, her adult conviction can be sealed, according to the district attorney’s office.
“This agreement provided us the greatest opportunity to get the most public safety and justice for the community. What this defendant did was not just idle chatter,” said District Attorney George Brauchler in a news release. “At the same time, the agreement offers the best chance for rehabilitation for this defendant, who has accepted responsibility and has earned that chance.”
Higgins admitted in December she had plotted the attack with fellow student Sienna Johnson, whose case is still in court.
Court documents showed she had told friends she wanted to commit a mass shooting and that she idolized Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. She had also texted multiple people in an attempt to get a gun.
But after Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, Higgins’ attorney, Iris Eytan, blamed 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler for depression he says Higgins has suffered since she was charged.
Brauchler initially filed adult charges against Higgins and ordered her be held on a $1 million bond. Eytan added that depression from an instance in which Higgins was allegedly raped contributed to her mental state before she planned the shooting.
“Her emotional state was not about to kill anyone else, but to kill herself,” he said.
Eytan also blamed Colorado media for the hoopla that surrounded the case.
Higgins herself apologized to “the teachers, the students and the parents” at Mountain Vista High School, saying she was “sorry for the things that [she] joked about and talked about.”
“I never meant for things to get so out of hand and I never meant to hurt anyone,” she said.
Johnson’s case is still pending in courts after a Jan. 6 hearing was rescheduled. She is charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder after deliberation.
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Bill that would repeal Colorado health insurance exchange clears first Senate committee
DENVER – The Colorado bill that would repeal the state health exchange that operates under the Affordable Care Act cleared its first hurdle Tuesday in a Senate committee.
The Senate Finance Committee voted 3-2 to pass Senate Bill 3 on a party-line vote. Democratic Sens. Lois Court and Lucia Guzman voted against passing the bill, while Republican Sens. Jack Tate, Owen Hill and Tim Neville voted to pass it.
The committee passage followed hours of discussion about the necessity of the bill while Congress is locked in a battle over whether or not to repeal, and possibly replace, the Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare,” on a national level.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jim Smallwood, argued Tuesday that the expenses of the state exchange, Connect for Health Colorado, outweigh its benefits and that several smaller Colorado counties are limited in their insurance options, according to The Associated Press.
Court argued that the state’s health insurance plans would have to be changed anyway should Congress be successful in repealing the ACA.
The bill would repeal the state exchange effective Jan. 1, 2018, though it would give lawmakers until the end of that year to “wind up” the exchange.
After that, the exchange would have to give any remaining money left over to the state treasurer, who would be directed to transfer the money to the state’s general fund.
Should it pass and be signed by the governor, however, a referendum petition could be filed to force a General Election vote on the matter in November 2018.
Smallwood told Denver7 last month that should his bill become law while the ACA is still in place that it would not affect people’s ability to get insurance on the federal marketplace.
“With my proposal, first of all we want people to know that by repealing the state exchange that in no way ends the ACA, it doesn’t end Obamacare in the state of Colorado,” he said at the time. “It allows our citizens to buy the same policies from the same insurance companies at the same rates, but on website healthcare.gov instead of connectforhealthco.com because healthcare.gov is being paid for with federal dollars because with connect for health we’re paying for it, again, with our state dollars.”
The bill heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee for its next hearing, which has yet to be scheduled. It would then head to the Senate floor, if passed, where Republicans hold control.
But it would face a steep uphill climb from there in the House, where Democrats have control – most of whom have vocally opposed efforts to repeal the ACA.
Beyond that, Gov. John Hickenlooper supports the state exchange and has vowed to fight the repeal of the ACA. Should it be repealed, he said during his State of the State address that he would fight for a replacement plan “that protects the people who are covered now and doesn’t take us backward.”
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Colorado bills aim to change abortion rules; one would make performing abortion a class 1 felony
DENVER – A handful of bills introduced in Colorado’s House of Representatives aim to affect abortion laws in the state, but they will first have to clear a House committee chaired by a doctor who specializes in reproduction.
ABORTION-RELATED BILLS FILED
One bill, House Bill 1108, would make it a class 1 felony for practitioners to perform an abortion unless it is intended to save the mother’s life or unless the unborn child dies as a result of medical treatment, such as chemotherapy.
That would put practitioners who perform abortions in the same category as first-degree murderers, child abusers who cause a child’s death and people charged with treason.
The bill is sponsored by Reps. Stephen Humphrey and Kim Ransom, as well as Sen. Tim Neville.
Another bill, House Bill 1086, would require practitioners to tell a woman about a process that can be used to reverse “abortion pills” 24 hours before giving a woman the pill, and would require the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to post information on its website about the process.
Though the process is not widely-used at this time, researchers at the University of California-San Diego published a paper on it in 2012. The bill says that as of May 2016, the process had been successfully utilized in 175 pregnancies.
But others have warned of dangers linked to the process.
The process works by using a hormone-based drug that utilizes progesterone, which is a necessary hormone in women’s bodies, to reverse the effects of the main compound in “abortion pills,” mifepristone.
The bill, sponsored by Reps. Justin Everett and Dan Nordberg and Sen. Vicki Marble, says it aims to “reduce ‘the risk that a woman may elect an abortion, only to discover later, with devastating psychological consequences, that her decision was not fully informed.’”
A third bill (House Bill 1085), titled the “Women’s Health Protection Act” and sponsored by Rep. Patrick Neville, a Douglas County Republican, would require any clinics that provide abortions to register with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, which would have to inspect each registered clinic at least once a year to be sure it is using sanitary equipment and is adhering to special rules also outlined in the bill for abortions performed after 20 weeks of gestation.
But currently, first and second-trimester abortions (up to 26 weeks’ gestation) are allowed in Colorado, as are “late-term” abortions that are most often performed because a fetus as developed complications.
The bill would require clinics to report the number of abortions it performed and the trimester it was performed in, among many other things, in its registration with the attorney general.
CLEARING COMMITTEE AND HOUSE COULD PROVE DIFFICULT
The three bills face a difficult course in Colorado’s Legislature.
They are all scheduled for their first committee hearing Feb. 9 in the House Health, Insurance and Environment Committee, in which Democrats outnumber Republicans 6-5.
The committee is chaired by Rep. Joann Ginal, Ph.D., a Democrat from Fort Collins who is also a reproductive endocrinologist by trade. Its vice chair is Rep. Daneya Esgar, a Pueblo Democrat who is also the majority caucus chair.
Esgar told Denver7 in an interview this week that the three bills would get “a fair hearing,” but that she and her fellow Democrats would “stand up for all women’s rights.”
But she expressed concern over some of the aforementioned bills the committee is set to hear Feb. 9.
“We just passed the 44th anniversary of Roe v Wade, and I share the same frustrations that the millions of women exhibited on Saturday across the country [in the Women’s March events nationwide] – instead of being able to focus on how to make health care for everyone more affordable and more accessible, we are still fighting for basic reproductive rights,” she told Denver7.
Ginal told the Coloradoan that the bills wouldn’t pass the House, which is also controlled by Democrats, should they make it out of committee.
She said House Bill 1085 contained “impossible regulations,” according to the Coloradoan.
Esgar expressed concern over House Bill 1108, saying it was “a very dangerous idea to target doctors and health providers” by making them class 1 felons.
“They are providing a medical service and should never be singled out. Abortion is not a crime, it’s a safe and legal procedure,” she told Denver7. “History has shown that banning abortion, or stopping access to safe abortions, is dangerous for women’s lives.”
But she stopped short of saying such bills further divide the Legislature, in which Democrats control the House and Republicans control the Senate.
“There are definitely issues, like this one, that we do not agree on and that can cause tension at times. However, we do have more in common than divides us, and here in Colorado we actually work really well together,” Esgar said. “Our work is to come together and find out how to bring the state forward even with divergent ideas.”
Still, abortion remains among the most hot-button issues in Colorado politics, as Colorado Republicans have fought to restrict abortion access for years on both the state and federal levels and Democrats fight to keep women’s reproductive rights already on the law books in place.
Many of the state’s counties do not have abortion clinics, but the state does require only licensed physicians perform abortions, parental consent for women under age 18 to obtain an abortion, and that taxpayer funding for abortions is only provided to preserve a woman’s life or in the case of rape or incest.
The peer-reviewed research group Guttmacher Institute, which researches sexual and reproductive health and rights, found the number of abortions declined by 14 percent between 2011 and 2014, but that there was also a 14 percent decline over that time period in the number of Colorado facilities that provided abortions.
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Dillon woman, friend survive 52 hours in Colorado backcountry after skiing out of bounds
DILLON, Colo. – A Dillon woman and her friend survived 52 hours in the Colorado backcountry after they accidentally skied out of bounds while at Monarch Mountain.
It was Kelsey Malin’s first trip to Monarch. She and a friend had gotten off the Panorama Lift and went straight over the mountain into a deep pocket of powder, not realizing they were out of bounds.
“There were no ropes, no signs or anything – just this awesome stash of powder and trees,” she said.
She and her friend tried to hike back up to the top of the mountain, but couldn’t do it.
Stranded without survival gear, food, or water, the two built a snow cave and spent the night.
They tried to hike out again the next day, but with feet of snow slowing their travel, the two were forced to build another cave and again ride the cold night out.
“There were definitely some points where I thought I was going to die,” Malin said. “There were definitely points where I wanted to give up.”
But she didn’t, and neither did her friend. Help eventually arrived and took the two to an area hospital.
Malin suffered severe frostbite on her feet, and some frostbite and frost-nip to her fingers. She says she still has reduced feeling in her fingers, despite them looking better. Her feet are still bandaged.
Malin credits anti-coagulant treatment at University Hospital for giving her hope she may be able to keep most of her toes.
But she says that despite the life=-threatening ordeal and frostbite that is sure to affect her in the future, she can only think about the next time she can go skiing.
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Apparent hate crime in Peyton draws attention from national Muslim council, feds
PEYTON, Colo. – A possible hate crime in a small town northeast of Colorado Springs has drawn the attention of the FBI and the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization.
The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to Denver7 Tuesday that the homeowners in Peyton woke up Sunday to find the outside of their home vandalized with eggs, dog feces, bath tissue and papers scrawled with messages regarding the homeowners’ racial background.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Tuesday condemned the incident.
“Our nation’s leaders – at the highest levels – need to address the growing bigotry we are witnessing around the country in the post-election period,” CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said in a statement.
The FBI’s Denver branch confirmed it was investigating but gave no further details.
“The FBI does not comment on active, ongoing investigations of the FBI’s or other investigative agencies,” Denver branch spokeswoman Amy Sanders told Denver7.
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