Ground zero on abortion

Four decades ago, Colorado became first state in the nation to liberalize law

Lisa Ryckman, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 24, 2007 at midnight

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Mary Rita Urbish remembers perfectly the moment 40 years ago when Colorado became ground zero in the battle over abortion.

It was April 25, 1967 - the day a proposal by a legislator named Lamm was signed into law by a governor named Love, making the state the first in the nation to liberalize its abortion law. In that moment, as supporters cheered the potential end of illegal abortions, a social movement was born.

"I was so angry," said Urbish, one of the founders of Colorado Right to Life. "It's like a continuous loop in my mind that just runs and runs and runs and runs. It makes me mad to think about it, even now, 40 years later."

Future Gov. Richard Lamm was a freshman state legislator when he introduced the bill to overhaul Colorado's century-old abortion law. His proposal, based on the recommendations of the American Law Institute, allowed a three-doctor panel to approve abortions in cases of rape, incest, severe fetal defects, to save a woman's life or if the pregnancy threatened her physical or mental health.

In 1966, just one therapeutic abortion was performed at Denver General Hospital under the old law, which allowed abortion only to save a woman's life or prevent serious bodily injury. That same year, 27 women were admitted to the hospital because of botched abortion attempts, and 208 girls ages 12 to 19 gave birth there.

"Prior to that bill, it was just totally illegal, and all the abortions were in back rooms," said John Bermingham, a Denver Republican who was the bill's chief Senate sponsor. "(The bill) just seemed like the right thing to do. Back-room abortions were disgraceful."

The University of California School of Public Health estimated that before 1966, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 women died each year in the U.S. from complications of illegal abortions.

Seeking a back-alley abortion is "courting suicide," Dr. Rosamond Hathaway, director of the Boulder Mental Health Center, told the legislature.

Hearing was jammed

Lamm's measure passed easily in the House. But Bermingham said he and other Senate sponsors knew that Lt. Gov. Mark Hogan, a Catholic, would assign the bill to the State Affairs Committee - chaired by another Catholic - "and that would be the end of it."

So the bill's supporters arranged to have the measure waylaid by a sympathetic woman at the statute revision office in the Capitol basement - a required stop for bills moving from one chamber to the other - until a day when Hogan was absent. Then it was hustled up and quickly assigned to the Health and Welfare Committee, which Bermingham chaired.

The subsequent public hearing was so packed that Urbish ended up standing directly behind Bermingham at the committee table.

"What went on that day was, in my view, disgraceful," she said. "We (as Americans) had not deliberately planned to kill innocent human beings . . . To hear it in a formal hearing was more than I could stand . . . It was disgraceful - besides being outrageous and all the rest of it."

The hearing was disrupted by a man who accused the legislators of ramming the bill down the public's throat, and another who plopped a jar containing a fetus on the table in front of the senators.

"It was different than it is now, in that the religious right had not developed," Bermingham said. "But the Catholic church was very opposed and they denounced me in the pulpit."

He received sacksful of mail, mostly from Catholic churches, which had urged parishioners to write.

"Will you allow Colorado to become the abortion center of the U.S.?" one church bulletin asked.

Mothers marched on Capitol

After the Senate passed the bill, Urbish and others collected 10,000 signatures urging Gov. John Love to veto it and organized a mothers march on the Capitol.

"We called our friends and asked them to call their friends," she said. "At the march, we were all dressed up in skirts and stockings and high heels, with babies in strollers."

At the signing, the governor said he had received 5,000 letters and telegrams on both sides of the issue and called it one of his most difficult decisions.

"The fear that some have that Colorado will become an 'abortion mecca' does not seem well-founded," Love said. "I believe the bill contains safeguards and is designed to do something about areas of suffering and abuse which have been of concern to a great many people for a great period of time. The illegally procured abortion is a matter which concerns all of us."

The first abortion under the new law was performed on a 12-year-old rape victim. By year's end, there were 141 legal abortions recorded.

During 1968, 476 legal abortions were performed, although the red tape and expense kept illegal abortionists busy.

Lamm said at the time that there was no danger that Colorado would become an "obstetrical Las Vegas," as opponents had predicted. By the end of 1967, most hospitals already were refusing to serve nonresidents.

"A giant misconception as to the Colorado law is that women don't realize how restrictive it is," Lamm said. "It is desperately difficult for an out-of-state woman to get an abortion here."

'We couldn't let it go'

In the wake of Colorado's law, California, North Carolina, Maryland and Georgia liberalized their abortion statutes, and other states took up the issue. In July 1967, Urbish and a dozen friends met at her house to discuss the next step in the fight.

"We decided we couldn't let it go," said Urbish, who became the first secretary of the newly incorporated Colorado Right to Life in 1970.

"From 1970 on, we tried to reverse the effect of the 1967 bill. We were just green as grass and not as effective as our opposition, but it was very obvious by that time that it was going to become a national effort. So we had to stick with it."

ryckmanl@RockyMountainNews.com

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