Colorado ordered to pay $5.4M after abortion law blocked

By Elyse Apel
The Center Square

Colorado must pay back legal fees after it was sued for a law banning abortion pill reversals, a federal court ruled this week.

The state will pay $5.4 million in attorneys’ fees to Becket, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, which represented a Denver-area Catholic crisis pregnancy center in the lawsuit against the state.

Rebekah Ricketts, senior counsel at Becket and an attorney for Bella Health and Wellness, spoke with The Center Square in an exclusive interview regarding the ruling.

“Colorado enacted a law banning doctors and nurses from offering life-saving care to women who have taken the first abortion pill but then decide to continue their pregnancies,” Ricketts explained. “A federal court blocked the law, holding that Colorado’s law was unconstitutional.”

In 2023, the Colorado legislature passed a law making it “unprofessional conduct” for Colorado health care providers to prescribe medications for women who were seeking medical help in reversing the effects of abortion drugs.

State Sen. Janice Marchman, D-Loveland, sponsored the bill.

“In Colorado and across America, maternal outcomes are declining, and anti-abortion centers that use deceptive advertising to draw in vulnerable people seeking care and misleading them with biased and inaccurate information about abortions and contraceptives are only making the problem worse,” Marchman said. “Our bill will crack down on deceptive practices used by some of these bad actors, and is a proactive step we can take towards a future where Coloradans’ freedom to access essential and affirming reproductive health care is truly protected.”

Just like Marchman, the law labeled centers like Bella Health and Wellness “anti-abortion centers.” Before the law, the center was providing abortion pill reversals. The same day Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill into law, the center filed its lawsuit against the state.

Just a few months later, in October, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction stopping that law. Two years later, the same judge issued a permanent injunction in favor of Bella Health and Wellness, citing its First Amendment rights.

“While the clinical efficacy of abortion pill reversal remains debatable, nobody has been injured by the treatment and a number of women have successfully given birth after receiving it,” the August ruling said. “The defendants have thus failed to show that they have a compelling interest in regulating this practice.”

That decision struck down Colorado’s attempt to ban abortion pill reversals, which was the first law of its kind in the nation.

“The court’s ruling last August ensured that clinics like Bella can continue offering life-saving care to women and their babies across Colorado,” Ricketts said. “Colorado’s attempt to deprive women of medical help was unscientific, unkind, and unconstitutional.”

She added that, just during the litigation of the past few years, 18 babies have been born because of abortion pill reversal treatment provided by Bella Health and Wellness.

“Those children may never have been born if the state’s ban had gone into effect,” Ricketts said.